Four Years In A Red Hell

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Four Tears in a Hsd hello

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Four years in a Red hell.

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DA IE DUb

IN

Stc*y of Father Ri

FOUR YEARS
IN A RED HELL

The Story of FATHER RIGNEY

by HAROLD W. RIGNEY, S.V.D.

Divine Word Missionary

1956
HENRY REGNERY COMPANY Cl ^^ r-Bfll , ^ .

Chicago

Copyright 1956 by Harold W. Rigney.
Manufactured in the United States of
America. Copyright under International
Copyright Union. Library of Congress
Catalogue Card Number: 56-8509.

DEDICATION

To my dear stepmother, Mrs. Addie Rigney,
my dear brother and sisters, Reverend Doctor
J. Francis Rigney, Mrs. Mildred Derby, Mrs.
Mary Anne Hanley, Mrs. Dorothy Haggerty,
Mrs. Helen Brady, and their families, and all,
especially the Divine Word Missionaries
(S.V.D.), Msgr. Thomas A. Meehan, the
clergy, sisters, and all the Catholic laity, young
and old, of 'Chicagoland, Joseph B. Meegan,
Thomas F. Reynolds, and members of the Sen
ate and Lower House of the U. S. Congress
and the U. S. State Department, who by prayer
and petition obtained my release from prison,
to the noble German and Chinese Holy Ghost
Missionary Sisters ( S.Sp.S. ) , my last friends in
Peking, who stood by me and helped me in
days that were bitter, and to the persecuted
Catholics of China and their heroic martyrs
and confessors.

PREFACE

ON FEBRUARY i, 1949, Peiping (Peking), China was captured
by the communists.

From then until July 25, 1951, I daily expected to be ar
rested by the communists in reprisal for my fight before and
after their capture of Peiping, to preserve the Fu Jen Catholic
University of Peking (Peiping), over which I was rector, as
a true center of culture.

On July 25, 1951, 1 was arrested by the Chinese communist
Sepo ( Security Police, the Gestapo of Red China) , on unjust,
false and outrageous grounds. After a veritable hell of four
years and two months of physical and mental tortures, I was
released from prison on September 11, 1955, as a result of the
prayers and written petitions of my relatives and many friends
in the U.S.A. and other parts of the world.

I was then expelled from communist China into the free
territory of Her Majesty's Crown Colony of Hong Kong, on
September 16, 1955.

In the following pages, I have attempted to describe the ex
perience of my imprisonment of 50 months in the city that is
now called Peking, China.

I wish to thank the Reverend Henry Striethorst, S.V.D.,
Superior of the Divine Word Mission, 10 Tung Shan Terrace,
Stubbs Road, Hong Kong, and his secretary, Mrs. Elizabeth
Lee Solabarrieta, as well as the Very Reverend Lawrence G.
Mack, S.VJD. Provincial, and the Reverend Ralph M. Wiltgen,
S.V.D., both of St. Mary Mission Seminary, Techny, Illinois,
U.S.A,, for their help in the preparation of the manuscript.

HAROLD W. RIGNEY, S.V.D., Rector,

THE FU JEN CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF PEKING,

PEKING (PEEPING), CHINA.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

PREFACE vii

1. THE STRUGGLE TO SAFEGUARD Fu JEN

CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY i

2. MORE "CRIMES" 5

3. STILL MORE "CRIMES" 12

4. "FATHER, FORGIVE THEM** 18

5. MY ARREST 25

6. CELL No. 10 29

7. MY FIRST COURT SESSION 33

8. Wo Tou AND PAI TSAI 37

9. BODILY FILTH, LICE, AND INTELLIGENCE WORK . . 41

10. CONDEMNED TO DEATH 45

11. CELL-MATES AND THE COMMUNISTS' COURT

PROCEDURE 49

12. CONFESSIONS OF A SLEEPING PRISONER .... 56

13. SQUATTING 62

14. A FALSE CONFESSION 66

15. A DENIAL AND A RETRACTION 69

16. PRAYING 74

17. MORE DENIALS AND THE COLD 80

18. HANDCUFFS AND FETTERS 86

19. DIVINE WORD MISSIONARIES, FOOD AND CLOTHING 90

20. MOVING TO THE SOUTH COMPOUND 96

21. PRIESTS FOREVER 100

22. ANOTHER DENIAL 105

23. CRUSHED HOPES 109

24. THE GOOD SISTERS OF Fu JEN 113

CONTENTS continued

CHAPTER PAGE

25. THE LAST DENIAL 119

26. Tou CHENG AND SELF CRITICISM 123

27. AN UNFORGETTING, FORGOTTEN PRISONER . . . 128

28. DROWSINESS 133

29. ON THE VERGE OF A MENTAL BREAKDOWN . . . 137

30. GENERAL Tou CHENGS 141

31. GERM WARFARE 145

32. A LONG SENTENCE IN THE MAKING 150

33. LETTERS FROM HOME . ........ 155

34. SENTENCED 159

35. A MATCH Box MAKER 163

36. MY LAST FRIENDS: CHINESE HOLY GHOST

MISSIONARY SISTERS 167

37. THE SKIES ARE THE SAME 171

38. 4,200 MATCH BOXES IN ONE DAY 174

39. BACK TO TS'AO LAN Tzu 179

40. AN ENCOURAGING COURT SESSION 185

41. SOLITARY CONFINEMENT 189

42. RELEASED 194

43. THE JOURNEY OUT OF CHINA STARTED .... 198

44. WHO WAS BRAINWASHING WHOM . 202

45. TSAI CHIEN CHUNG Kuo (FAREWELL CHINA TILL

WE MEET AGAIN) ........ 206

46. HONG KONG: FREEDOM ........ 209

47. THE HARVEST 217

48. EPILOGUE 220

The Struggle to Safeguard Fu Jen
Catholic University

"You ARE AEBESTED as an American spy/' said a woman mem
ber of the Sepo (Security Police) who had accompanied the
police to my living quarters where they had hand-cuffed me.
As she spoke, she held up to my view a small piece of paper
with Chinese characters on it.

I was arrested!

I was arrested as a spy an American spy!

For five years I had fought the Chinese communists, in my
efforts to protect the Fu Jen Catholic University of Peking
from their poisonous infiltrations and their disturbing, destruc
tive tactics. In the latter part of this period, I had tried to pre
serve this university, as a citadel of learning and true culture,
from being taken over by the communist government.

These were my "crimes," the real reasons for my arrest.

However, I was not charged with doing all this but with
being a spy.

The communists had forcibly taken over the Fu Jen Catho
lic University of Peking on 12 October, 1950, where I was the
rector. They wanted to justify this theft by libeling this uni
versity as a center of American espionage. They began by
libeling me, the rector, as an American spy.

I thought of how Christ was charged with being a counter
revolutionary, a spy, to use the jargon of present day com-

NOTE. In this book the names of prisoners, aside from myself, are fictitious.

Four "Years in a Red Hell

munists, and not with being the Messiah. I thought of how
Nero in his attempt to destroy Christianity burned Christians
alive under charges of being saboteurs, counter-revolution
aries or spies who set Rome ablaze, and not for being Chris
tians. So on down the ages, the persecutors of the followers of
Christ, the Neros of the past, as well as those of the present:
Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Tito, Mao Tse-tung, have followed the
same tactics of accusing, imprisoning and killing the fol
lowers of Christ under the title of counter-revolutionaries,
saboteurs, spies and what not, for anything but being the
Christians they hate, whose religion they seek to destroy.

I felt I had noble forerunners and my handcuffs were no
disgrace but an honor.

The "People's" government of China may call me a spy, but
I am not and never was a spy.

I often thought that according to the Chinese communists,
every one who enjoys the faculties of sense perception, as
seeing, hearing, smelling, is apt to be accused of collecting
intelligence: of being a spy. Reading the local Chinese com
munist newspaper, looking out the window and noting that
it rained, hearing the price of food on the market, have all
been declared by the communist courts of China as collecting
intelligence.

Moreover, anyone exercising their faculties of communi
cating, as speaking, writing, is apt to be accused of reporting
intelligence: of being a spy. Writing about news items of the
local communist press, writing a letter in which one states
that it rained, telling another the price of shao mi (millet),
have been declared by these same communist courts as re
porting intelligence.

It was in mid December 1946, that I learned of the general
strike at Fu Jen. I was in Shanghai, where I had gone to wel
come His Excellency Archbishop Antonio Riberi, the newly
arrived Internuncio to China.

The Struggle to Safeguard Fu Jen Catholic University

There had been agitation instigated among the students of
Fu Jen by an evidently organized student group of subversive
agents. This culminated in a general strike, in December,
1946, over an increase in dormitory fees to meet with the in
crease in the inflation of the Chinese currency. Any fair
minded person acquainted with the conditions of China at
that time would have made no objections to this increase
which was normal.

From my investigations I concluded that this subversive
group were communists. I was shocked to think that a hand
ful of communists could exercise such influence in the Fu
Jen Catholic University where the Catholic students were
certainly as numerous if not more numerous than the commu
nists, although about 90% of our students were non-Catholics,
mostly pagans with a few Protestants and Mohammedans.

Did the Catholic students appreciate what was done for
them at Fu Jen? Were they slumbering, inert, overcome by a
feeling of false security, instead of being alert, aroused and
active to protect their university and fight for their rights to
study in peace? These thoughts plagued me on my return to
Peiping when negotiations were carried on to settle the strike
and allow over 2,500 university students to pursue the ends
for which they had come to Fu Jen: to study, to be allowed
the peace and quiet needed to cultivate their minds by study
ing, instead of agitations aroused by agents of a Stalin-Mao
Tze-tung conspiracy little concerned with the true welfare of
these very students and their fatherland, China.

The Catholic students of Fu Jen did appreciate what was
being done for them at Fu Jen, as I soon learned. They were
not inert, they were ready to fight for their university and
their right to study in peace. They only needed leadership.
This was supplied them by courageous Chinese priests, who
were also students at Fu Jen. Once these brave students were
organized, I gave them advice and directions in the struggle.
As a consequence, we defeated every attempt of the commu-

Four Hears in a Red Hell

nists to lead the Fu Jen students into strikes and street demon
strations during 1947. We helped the students to avoid
participating in such as the strike and demonstration planned
for January 1947, under the cloak of an anti-civil war move
ment, and another, an anti-American strike and demonstra
tion scheduled for the beginning of June 1947. These were so
many "crimes" of mine: sabotaging the "progressive" move
ment at Fu Jen.

This brief account does not permit a full and complete
statement of the various tricks and attacks the communists
instigated at Fu Jen as well as the fight we made against them.
While other universities of Peiping area were disturbed by
strikes and other forms of communist subversive activities, Fu
Jen enjoyed relative peace.

I think back to those days, with great admiration for those
Catholic students and their brave fighting spirit.

God bless them!

2

More "Crimes'

DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR, Fu Jen continued to carry
on under the leadership of German Divine Word Missionaries,
or members of the Society of the Divine Word (in Latin,
Societas Verbi Divini S.V.D.), who strove to preserve the
university as a center of true culture, for the Church. They
put up a good fight but since the university was in that part
of China controlled by the Japanese, they were obliged to
observe the regulations of the local Japanese government.
However, and this is important, they continued to be recog
nized by the National Government of China, in Chungking.
The Japanese tried to take over all of Fu Jen. They did take
over the Fu Jen's Boys' Middle School and then tried to take
over Fu Jen University. The Very Reverend Rudolf Rahmann,
S.V.D., rector of Fu Jen, fought to regain the middle school
and he succeeded. He also successfully fought and saved the
university. For all this, he deserves much credit.

When however the fighting of the second World War was
over, there was fear that the Nationalist Government would
confiscate Fu Jen as German property as they did the German
hospital at Peiping, Divine Word mission property as in Ishui-
Wan Chuang, diocese of Ichoufu, Shantung, and the proper
ties of private Germans.

There was evidence that a group of staff members of Fu
Jen planned with the help of the Nanking government to oust
the Divine Word Missionaries as Germans and take over and
control Fu Jen. It so happens that I knew quite a lot about
this. How later these same staff members, full of smiles, with-

Four Years in a Red Hell

out a wrinkle of shame, could meet me, is something I could
never fathom. At any rate, I considered they were anything
but pleased with me for helping to thwart their plans and
their smiles were not to express joy and friendliness at seeing
me but to cover feelings that were quite the contrary.

The rector, Father Rahmann, still fighting to preserve Fu
Jen, declared that Fu Jen was American property and he was
correct.

Fu Jen had been founded by American Benedictines who
bought the property which they registered as American prop
erty, and developed Fu Jen University according to American
pattern. When the Divine Word Missionaries and especially
the American province of this society succeeded the Amer
ican Benedictines as the administrators of Fu Jen, they per
petuated Fu Jen as an American-owned, American patterned
institution. There were Divine Word Missionaries of Amer
ican nationalities as well as other nationalities, especially
Germans, on the faculties. During the second World War,
when the American Divine Word Missionaries were placed in
concentration camps, the German confreres continued, with
increasing numbers, to represent the Divine Word Mission
aries at Fu Jen, without essentially changing the American
character of Fu Jen.

It was quite easy for an opportunistic group, after the
Pacific War, to point to Fu Jen as a German institution and
the Divine Word Missionaries there as agents of the German
and Japanese governments. These missionaries, under great
difficulties, had only carried on a project of the Church and
were able to do so because of their nationality. I have great
respect for these fathers. Their chief concern was to hold, to
save an institution of the Church. Hence, when Japanese
influence in China was replaced by American influence, they
yielded with no resentment or ill will that I ever detected, and
stepped to one side to allow American Divine Word Mission
aries to occupy the key positions.

More "Crimes"

It was in these circumstances that I, as an American, was
sent to Fu Jen. I had been on the teaching staff and served as
Catholic chaplain at Achimota College now the University
College, Gold Coast, British West Africa. In November 1942,
I was commissioned in Accra (Gold Coast capital) in the
U. S. Army, as a chaplain assigned to the U. S. Army Air Force
and served in that capacity until February 1946. In May 1946,
I was sent to Peiping to the Divine Word community of Fu
Jen. In July, 1946, 1 was appointed rector of Fu Jen University
and rector of the Divine Word community there. On August
4th, 1946, 1 took over these two offices.

I was given these appointments not because of great schol
arship, which I do not have, or a rich background of experi
ence in China, which I did not have, but because I was an
American, an ex-commissioned officer and chaplain, fresh
from the U. S. Army, with a Doctor of Philosophy degree in
Geology.

Since Fu Jen had been known as an American institution,
the American Consul General in Peiping gave Rector Rah-
mann to understand that it would be more fitting to have an
American as rector of Fu Jen.

I eventually became this American rector.

Hence, the communists accused me of being sent to take
over German influence. This was a great "crime." The only
German influence, if one could call it such, which I took over,
was a community of some forty Divine Word priests and
brothers, which was 90% German.

When I arrived in Peiping in June 1946, there were Amer
ican servicemen there of the Army and Marines. I met many
of these and as an ex-army chaplain, enjoyed their company.
Among these servicemen I met, were personnel of O.S.S.
(Office of Strategic Service).

Tlie Peiping O.S.S. approached me on one occasion asking
me if I knew whether a radio of the former German Embassy,

Four Years in a Red Hell

which had been used for monitoring messages, was hidden in
Fu Jen. I felt the honor of the university was at stake and
made an investigation of the university buildings and grounds
without discovering any evidence of such a radio. I told this
officer that I could find no radio as he had described. Later,
the communists learned of this from a Chinese prisoner, at
Ts'ao Lan Tzu prison, who had worked for O.S.S. with, I am
told, the rank of a colonel. They accused me of serving as an
O.S.S., since I had conducted an investigation for them. They
totally disregarded the fact that I simply investigated the
university over which I was rector.

I also told an O.S.S. officer rumors of the countryside to the
effect that the communist troops near Peiping had been seen
with American side arms and an American ambulance that
had disappeared from American control, and that Soviet
technicians had been seen with the Chinese communist army
in J^hol. This was all considered as military intelligence by
the cdmmunists.

Another activity that aroused the ire of the communists
was a survey of the Catholic Church of North China as of
June, 1947. This survey was conducted to learn the true nature
of the Church in North China as affected by the communists
and inform my ecclesiastical and religious superiors. The lat
ter were responsible to the Congregation of the Propagation
of the Faith in Rome, for the administration of Fu Jen Univer
sity, an important Church institution in North China. The
survey was also intended to acquaint the general public
through the press about the condition of the Church in com
munist occupied areas.

In December 1946, there were many missionaries: bishops,
priests, sisters, and brothers, Chinese and foreign, in Peiping
from' outside dioceses or missions. Most of them had been
expelled from their missions by the communists.

I organized a committee, representative of leading mission

8

More "Crimes"

bodies and various nationalities of North China, who had
members then in Peiping: a German Divine Word Mission
ary; a French Jesuit; a Belgian Scheut; a Dutch Franciscan;
a Chinese Lazarist and myself, an American Divine Word
Missionary. This committee collected data, mostly from bish
ops and superiors then in Peiping, which was assembled and
published in a final report. It dealt with the personnel, Chinese
and foreign; physical plants as churches, schools, rectories,
convents, hospitals, orphanages; as well as religious activities
of the Church, and all this before and after the occupation of
the communists. Some thirty-five dioceses or about 50% of
North China were covered which gave a good cross section
of North China. A missionary who had gone through the siege
and fall of Yenchowfu, Shantung, described his experience.
Another missionary described the capture by the commu
nists of Si Wan Tze or Chung Li in Charhar. These two de
scriptions were incorporated into the report.

This report was sent to H. E. Archbishop Riberi, Internun-
cio; to my superiors in Rome and Father Ralph, S.V.D., in
Chicago. Copies were shown to a friend of mine in O.S.S. and
to a colonel in the American Section of the Executive Head
quarters of Peiping who had given me an outline map of the
parts of China occupied by communists, such as would appear
in newspapers. I also showed the report to two journalists who
wrote articles based on it for a big New York paper and for
the American Catholic Press. This survey was called a great
"crime" by the communists, a big "spying program" that col
lected and disseminated social, religious, economic and mili
tary intelligence.

From August 1946, when I became rector, to January 1951,
when I was succeeded by Father Peter Sun, S.V.D., as rector
of the Fu Jen Divine Word Community, I sent monthly re
ports to my Superior General in Rome, who was also Chan
cellor of Fu Jen. In these reports I acquainted the Chancellor

Four 'Years in a Red Hell

with the events at Fu Jen as well as local conditions affecting
the university and the expenses of conducting it. A copy of
this report was sent to Father Ralph, S.V.D., who raised most
of the funds needed to maintain Fu Jen.* He had requested
me to keep him informed of affairs at Fu Jen to help him in his
journalistic and publicity activities for the university. I also
kept Archbishop Riberi, the Internuncio, informed of affairs
at Fu Jen. All this according to the communists was "crim
inal": collecting and submitting intelligence to the Vatican
and to the U. S. Government.

In the spring and summer of 1948, when the victorious
communist armies in the Northeast (Manchuria) captured
Mukden and swept down past the great wall, there was much
alarm at Fu Jen and other universities.

Many students and staff members fled to the South to avoid
the expected harshness and cruelties of the communists.

Others advocated moving Fu Jen to the South or to Taiwan
(Formosa) which I did not favor since I believed that if Pei-
ping fell, the South and Taiwan would eventually fall.

On putting the matter up to His Excellency, Archbishop
Riberi, Internuncio, in October 1948, 1 was instructed by His
Excellency not to move but to remain. In the event of Peiping
falling to the communists, I should, he said, try to work out a
modus vivendi or reasonable working agreement with them
that would allow the university to carry on.

In the autumn of 1948, some of the leading staff members
of Fu Jen advised and urged us foreign fathers and sisters to
leave Fu Jen and Peiping to save ourselves from being killed
by the communists when they came. I had reason to believe
that this advice was prompted mostly by a desire to induce
us Divine Word Missionaries to leave so that the lay staff

* Rev. Father Ralph, S.V.D., is National Director of "S.V.D. Catholic Uni
versities," 316 N. Michigan, Chicago, Illinois.

1O

More "Crimes"

which was mostly non-Catholic could take over the university
and then offer it to the communists in atonement for their
past Kuomintang activities. I replied that fathers and sisters
who could be declared surplus would leave but a few of us
would remain to negotiate a working agreement with the com
munists. At any rate, we would remain at the university as
long as we could, and hold on to as much as we could.

Later in October and November 1948, this same group
organized a staff union. To me, this looked very much like
another attempt to organize the staff to be prepared to take
over the university when the communists came, and offer it
to them. I counteracted by inducing all the fathers and sisters
to join the new staff union and with the help of their votes
elect a body of officers who would cooperate with us to negoti
ate a worldng agreement with the communists and save the
university for the Church. After this election, the movement
died out. No more meetings were held. For this, the com
munists accused me of sabotaging the "progressive" move
ment at Fu Jen.

In mid-December, the communist armies closed in on
Peiping, surrounding and laying siege to the city.

On February i, 1949, their armies led by Lin Piao entered
Peiping after the nationalist general, Fu Tso-I had surrendered
with his rich military supplies and large armies. He was later
rewarded with the post of Minister of Water Conservancy of
the communist government of the "People's Republic" of

China.

Peiping soon became the capital of Communist China and
was renamed Peking.

11

Still More "Crimes"

WE WERE THEN in communist controlled territory. Our plight
at Fu Jen entered another phase.

Some staff members wrote strong, offensive articles accusing
us Divine Word Missionaries, especially me, of being im
perialists. These were published in the local newspapers, now
under communist control.

I soon embarked on a policy of coming to a working agree
ment with the new order, as Archbishop Riberi had instructed
me.

I offered to remove some foreign fathers and sisters from key
positions and indicated a desire to enter into conference with
competent government officials and representatives of the
various groups of the university to work out a modus vivendi.

There was good will and sincerity on the part of the Divine
Word Missionaries but the "progressive" leaders of the Fu
Jen staff under the control of the communists showed no such
willingness. They replied by heaping more abuse on us Divine
Word Missionaries, especially foreign members. They com
pletely ignored us and formed a committee to reorganize the
university, I sought representation for the Church on this
committee since Fu Jen was an institution of the Church but
my many proposals in this regard were completely ignored
or rejected.

The university was to be reorganized without representa
tion on the part of the Church; without considering the wishes

Still More "Crimes 9 '

or suggestions of the Church which had founded, built and
financed Fu Jen since 1925.

This effort of mine to obtain representation of the Church
on the university reformation committee, was later held
against me as a "crime" of opposing and sabotaging the revolu
tion. Again, this made me a "counter-revolutionary."

In the spring of 1949, in the midst of the fight to save Fu Jen,
I was warned that a group of "progressives" planned to capture
me. This was to be done after dark when I returned on my
bicycle to the university. The "progressives" were to take me
to some hide-out, beat me up and torture me until I promised
to give them the gold the Divine Word Society had to finance
the university until June 30, 1949, the end of the fiscal year.

I could take no chances with this report. It probably was
false as there were reasons that militated against it. It was
also probably true, as there were reasons that supported it

So to protect myself, when I left the university alone on
my bicycle, I varied my routes from trip to trip and never
returned over the same route I had taken from the university.
If a gang of "progressives" wanted to waylay me, the prob
ability of avoiding them was in my favor.

Being followed was another probability I had to cope with.
Often when cycling through Peking I would make a detour
into a net of hutungs or lanes, making several sharp turns to
elude a possible tracer.

Another ruse of mine, on long open streets, was to ride fast
for about half a mile then suddenly slow up, get off my bicycle
and occupy myself with adjusting some part of the chain. A
tracer would be obliged to continue at a rapid rate taking
a lead far ahead of me. He could not slacken his rate, stop or
turn around without giving himself away. After a few minutes,
I would mount my bicycle and slowly ride, making a turn to
further evade the possible tracer.

I resorted to another stratagem when the bicycle traffic was

Four Years in a Red Hell

heavy by turning up a side hutung, riding a hundred or more
feet, then stopping to dismount, examine a part of the bicycle,
and slowly turn around and ride back, continuing on the first
busy street. The tracer, if he observed me make the turn into
the hutung, would be obliged to follow me up the hutung
and ride far past me, only to lose me when I rode away in the
opposite direction.

In the land of the police state of the red star, the system of
spying on people, keeping track of their movements, occupa
tions, activities, contacts, statements, etc., is organized as
never before. I often thought that Red China might have a
chance to succeed if the manpower and hours of labor devoted
to police work, to witch hunting, to spying on every single
person in the land, were devoted to real production of food
or other material wealth.

However, this is impossible in a communist country be
cause communism is so contrary to human desires and aspira
tions that it can maintain itself only by force, by the police
state.

This misuse of labor increases with the years because the
witch hunters continually pursue their searchings. As time
goes on, the mass of dossiers accumulates and more and more
witch hunters are needed to guard these bigger and bigger
mountains of dossiers as well as to continually go through
them, studying them and preparing new arrests. Arrests, im
prisonments, sentences and executions do not reduce or keep
this mass of material down, since the dossiers of such victims
are kept and restudied for more arrests.

A European member of the Fu Jen staff told me that my
waste paper basket was checked each night after I had left
my office. I decided to give witch hunters and their running
dogs on the university maintenance staff a little extra and
fruitless work. I often tore a letter in halves. One half I burned

14

Still More "Crimes'"

and the other I tore into tiny pieces smaller than postage
stamps which I mixed up and threw in my waste paper basket.
Some witch hunter spent hours of labor piecing these together
only to discover he had half a letter.

Often I received a letter from the British Council Library
inviting me to some exhibition or lecture at their library. These
letters with their large British Council letter heads were some
times torn up by me to small bits and thrown in the waste
basket to give the witch hunters a little exercise. The letter
head must have aroused their interest in piecing together a
letter that turned out to be only an invitation.

Such activities of eluding and teasing the witch hunters
of chairman Mao Tse-tung must have brought punishment
on me. The communists could not mention these by way of
accusations or "crimes.** Such would have spelled loss of face
for them. But they could, and I am sure they did, wreak their
vengeance on me under cover of false accusations of spying or
the like.

Often, later in prison, I felt that the communists had a
special hatred of me for the loss of face they suffered when I
thwarted and exposed their dirty tactics. To mention one or
the other instance: I prevented many of their strikes and
demonstrations at Fu Jen. I offered to talk matters over con
cerning Fu Jen, as they tell the world they like to do, but they
refused to negotiate for fear of losing some ground. I thwarted
their plans to induce the Fu Jen Catholics to petition them
to take over Fu Jen. I maneuvered the Fu Jen case to the point
where poor little Minister of Education Ma, with a communist
at his side whispering instructions to him, stated to me in a
conference that the only connection the Church could have
with Fu Jen was to finance it. The Church financing Fu Jen,
a communist controlled center of anti-religious, communist
activities!

The communists lost much face in their struggle in and over

15

Four Years in a Red Hell

Fu Jen and I was responsible for much of it. Therefore they
hated me, calumniated me and punished me.

It was evident that my phone was tapped. Whenever I re
ceived a call from a party outside the university and I began
to speak, the connections were often cut off for a few seconds
then remade. This seemed like time out to make connections
with a recording machine.

My suspicions were confirmed in the latter part of Sep
tember, 1950.

Father William Hogan, S.V.D., the last of the American
fathers to leave Fu Jen and Peking before me, had departed
to Tientsin enroute to Taku Bar for a ship back to the "old
country."

In Tientsin he phoned me, asking me to send him the
twenty-one copies of the list of the contents of his trunks,
which he had left behind since the highly "efficient" com
munist authorities for some unearthly reasons needed these
twenty-one duplicates.

I told him that I would get them and send them to him im
mediately. I then left my office to search Father Hogan's for
mer living quarters for them.

On returning to my office, my secretary, an elderly lady, told
me she had just started to phone and to her utter amazement
heard a conversation between Father Hogan and me. She was
perplexed and told me what she had heard. It was the end
of my recent conversation with Father Hogan.

After a moment's consideration, I told her there was noth
ing strange or mysterious about this. It was just another blun
der of the communist police and a proof that they were tap
ping my phone. These witch hunters, I explained to her, had
made a mistake of sending out the end of my conversation
of the last call instead of recording the new phone call.

When a new university senate was to be formed at Fu Jen,
in June 19493 1 requested and finally obtained two of the nine-

16

Still More "Crimes"

teen seats on it for the Church. This was also a "crime" of
mine a plot to sabotage the reformation of Fu Jen.

After all my efforts to negotiate a modus vivendi had failed,
I followed a delaying policy, a rear guard action, playing for
time, hoping against hope for a change either in the govern
ment or government policy. I held on to posts as long as pos
sible. This was also a "crime'*: working against the govern
ment.

In the spring of 1950, 1 tried to prevent the issuing of new
contracts to five members of the Fu Jen teaching staff, who
had demonstrated open hostility to the Church and us Divine
Word Missionaries in such a manner that it was impossible for
us to continue on the staff. I later withdrew this request since
it was contrary to the regulations of the Ministry of Educa
tion, as I was told. This request of mine was also a crime:
against the "People" of China.

"Father, Forgive Them"

ABOUND THE BEGINNING of October, 1950, when the Ministry
of Education of the communist government of Peking was
planning to take over Fu Jen, a Catholic member of the staff
who had gone over to the communist side, becoming a "pro
gressive" or "reformed" Catholic, wrote a petition requesting
the communist government to take over Fu Jen.

He then called representatives of the Catholic students and
Catholic members of the teaching, administrative and mainte
nance staff of Fu Jen, and instructed these representatives to
secure the signatures of all the Fu Jen Catholics to this petition.

I learned of this and told the students they were free to
sign or not to sign, but if they did sign, they would be separat
ing themselves from the fathers.

As a result of this expressed opinion of mine, none of the
students signed this disgraceful petition and they even pre
vailed on five of the seven staff members who had signed, to
retract their signatures.

Consequently, when the communists took over the univer
sity, there was no petition presented, signed by all the Cath
olics of Fu Jen, requesting the theft of Fu Jen, as the com
munists had planned. This action of mine was another of my
many "crimes" of sabotaging the revolution.

On October 12, when the formal taking over of Fu Jen
occurred, I had the speeches of the occasion, including that
of Ma, Minister of Education, taken down in shorthand, trans
lated and sent to my Superior General in Rome, who was
Chancellor of Fu Jen University, to Archbishop Riberi, Inter-

18

"Father, Forgive Them' 9

nuncio, and to Father Ralph, S.V.D., of Chicago, Illinois,
U.S.A., who raised most of the funds to operate Fu Jen. This
was also a "crime" of collecting and submitting intelligence
to my superiors, accused of serving as agents of the Vatican,
and to Father Ralph, accused of being an agent of the U. S.
Government.

Around the end of 1949, a person whom I knew, who
worked in the Municipal Foreign Office of Peking, told me
that the staff of the office had discussed a plan to take over
the former military barracks of the U. S. Consulate General
in Peking, which had become the main buildings of the consu
late. In a conversation I had with a friend in the American
Consulate, I told him about this discussion. This was a multiple
"crime" according to the communists: prying into government
plans, bribing cadres and passing on intelligence to the U. S.
government.

The same person in the municipal government also told me
that the communist government had planned to take over all
private schools, including universities, within two years. This
was a double "crime" of mine, according to the communists:
collecting intelligence and bribing cadres.

Around the time the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship was
published, two persons in Peking told me they had heard the
main contents of the treaty regarding allowing the Soviets
the use of Port Arthur and the joint development of mineral
deposits by the Soviets and Chinese in the Northwest. I told
this to a friend of mine in the U. S . consulate, a day or so before
the treaty was published in Peking. This was a "crime" ac
cording to the communists : collecting intelligence and report
ing it to tKe U. S. government.

In the summer of 1950, Prime Minister Chou En-lai had a
conference with the Chinese leaders of various Protestant

Four 'Years in a Red Hell

bodies in Peking. An account of this meeting was published in
a Peking daily paper. I had this article translated, since the
discussion it reported indicated the policy of the government
towards all Christian Churches, including the Catholic
Church. I sent copies of this translation to Archbishop Riberi,
Internuncio to China, as well as to my Superior General in
Rome. This was a "crime" according to the communists: col
lecting intelligence and reporting it to the Vatican.

Shortly after this, I made a statement to the Catholic stu
dents and staff of Fu Jen on the "Three Self Movement." The
movement was so called after the triple slogan:

"Self -government, self-support, and self -propagation of the
Church"

This slogan expressed the principles for the reformation of
the Christian Churches, Protestant and Catholic, of China.

I told these Catholics of Fu Jen that we Catholics favoured
the principles of self-support and self-propagation of the
Catholic Church in China, and we had always worked for the
realization of these.

The third principle, however, self government, was not
clear. If it meant that the Catholic Church of China should
have a Chinese clergy, that is, Chinese bishops and Chinese
priests, united and subject to the Bishop of Rome, the Pope,
then we could support this principle, but if it meant that the
Church of China was to be independent of the Bishop of
Rome, the Pope, then we did not and would not support it,
and nothing, death itself, could shake us from this our stand
of union with the Pope.

This union with the Bishop of Rome was essential to our
Catholic faith and religion. To break it would destroy our
faith. It would be apostasy.

I then added that since die "People's" Government of China
guaranteed freedom of religion, there was no need for Cath
olics to separate from Rome. I exhorted my hearers to remain
steadfast in their faith, come what may.

20

"Father, Forgive Them 9

God bless those stout hearted Chinese Catholics.

Most of them have preserved their faith in the present perse
cution of the Church in China, a persecution seldom paralleled
in history in cunning, in malice, in thoroughness and in
ferocity!

I repeated this instruction and exhortation once or twice in
public and often in private conversations with Catholics.

All this was "criminal" according to the communists:
"crimes" against the "people" of China, "crimes" of sabotage
of the religious reformation movement in the New China.

In the end of September I had a meeting with Minister of
Education Ma, who told me that the only connection the
Church could continue to have with Fu Jen would be the
financing of the university. The Church could not exercise any
administrative control over Fu Jen. I then asked if this control
included the forming of the Board of Trustees. To this he re
plied, "Yes."

I then reported to the Very Reverend Aloysius Grosse-Kap-
penberg, S.V.D., my Superior General and the Chancellor of
Fu Jen University, that the one and only condition on which
the Church had agreed to continue to subsidize Fu Jen,
namely, the right to nominate a new Board of Trustees, had
been rejected by the Ministry of Education of the "People V
government of China.

In a letter to my Superior General, shortly before this, I
reduced and simplified the Fu Jen question. I wrote that the
Church authorities must decide between one of two policies:

I. Continuing to finance Fu Jen, a center of atheism and
marxist communism, in the hope of a change in the policy of
the "People's" government of China, or else in the govern
ment itself, either of which would bring about a favourable
change allowing the Church to carry on Fu Jen, at least as a
neutral university, regarding religious matters.

21

Four years in a Red Hell

II. Discontinuing the Church subsidy to Fu Jen because of
its atheistic, communistic character.

Father Grosse-Kappenberg, S.V.D., submitted this ques
tion to the Congregation of the Propagation of the Faith
which in turn submitted it to His Holiness, Pope Pius XII, for
a decision.

His Holiness decided to discontinue the subsidy, thereby
disassociating the Church from atheistic, communistic Fu Jen.

This action of mine in informing my Superiors about Fu
Jen and about the decision of the Ministry of Education to
allow the Church to finance Fu Jen without enjoying one iota
of administrative control, was a "crime" of mine, opposing
the progressive movement.

So I could go on, tiring the reader with a longer list of my
alleged "crimes" against the "people" of China, but what has
been stated here is enough to acquaint one with the kind of
so-called "crimes" of which I was held guilty.

On October 12, 1950, Fu Jen was officially "taken over/'
better, confiscated or stolen, by the communist government
of China.

On October 19, 1950, 1 received a cable from my Superior
General in Rome, ordering me to return to the U.S. A.

On the following Monday, I applied for my exit permit.
This was necessary in order to leave China.

Day after day, week after week, month after month, I called
at the Bureau of Foreign Affairs of the Peking Police for my
exit permit but was always told, it had not come through.

In the previous August 1950, 1 had applied for a renewal of
my residential permit but this was denied me I was not al
lowed to live in China.

So, from October 23, 1950 until my arrest, I was not allowed
to live in China and I was denied the permission to leave
China.

Such inconsistencies are common in communist China.

22

"Father, Forgive Them"

I was informed by a friend of mine in November, 1950, of a
way of escaping from Red China. This friend gave the name,
address and telephone number of a person, who could and
would smuggle me out of China.

All I had to do was to present myself to this person, tell him
my name and the name of my friend, and in an hour or so, I
would be on my way out of communist China.

I thanked my friend for this kind offer but declined to avail
myself of it.

This was because I wanted to wait until the release of
Father Peter Huengsberg, S.V.D., of the Fu Jen University
staff, who had been arrested on September 29, 1950. 1 expected
him to be released any time, and I wanted to be around when
he returned from prison so I could help him leave China.

Then, too, I thought that if I were smuggled out of China,
all who knew me would be in danger of being punished by
the communists.

As time went on, I was more and more avoided by those I
knew, until finally, I was practically deserted by all.

No one visited me.

Hardly any one recognized me on the street.

Usually, if a Chinese who knew me, saw me coming, he or
she turned and went in the opposite direction, or simply re
fused to look at me, on passing.

Friends and acquaintances destroyed all their photographs
that featured me destroyed all evidences, as letters, recom
mendations, books, indications of ever having known me,
spoken to me or received any benefit from me.

I was abandoned.

Staff members and students of Fu Jen, many of whom I had
helped, now turned against me, accused me to the police, re
questing my arrest, in order to save themselves.

Yet, I understood and forgave them because I knew these
good people were under great pressure at the hands of the
communists, forcing them to act against their conscience.

23

Four Years in a Red Hell

I understood, better than before, how Our Blessed Lord
must have suffered at His trial, when He saw the same people
whom He had cured, consoled, preached to and those who
had loudly hailed and welcomed Him, a few days before, on
the First Palm Sunday, now joined in the mob, accusing Him
of being a criminal, shouting to crucify Him!

As never before, I began to understand those unfathomable
words of infinite charity and of boundless forgiveness! "Fa
ther, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing."
Luke XXIII, 34.

5-

My Arrest

JULY 25, 1951, was a day when a decision was to be reached
whether or not the cease-fire talks at Kaesong, Korea, were to
be resumed. I had felt unwell and consequently taken a rather
long rest after my noon dinner. At about 3:40 P.M., I arose,
with the intention of listening in to the "Voice of America"
broadcast at 4:00 o'clock, to learn whether or not the cease
fire talks in Korea were to be resumed.

As I started to dress, I was startled by the sound of many
men running near my living-quarters. I looked up through a
window and saw the top of a helmet dart by. Alarmed, I looked
out of another window and saw many policemen in "helmets
with tommy guns surrounding my residence. A group of about
six of them formed in a line, about 50 feet from the entrance
of my residence, in battle formation, with their rifles pointed
at the door and windows of my cabin-like residence. I then
knew that what I had been expecting for twenty months,
since the communist armies occupied Peiping, February i,
1949, and especially for the last ten months, since the "Peo
ple V* government of China had taken over Fu Jen University,
was about to take place I was to be arrested.

I dressed as fast as I could. A policeman looked in my bed
room and saw me. He then went to my door and beat on it
demanding that I open it, which I did. In a moment my living
quarters were filled with armed Sepo (Security Police) . Two
of them seized me by the arms while other policemen made a
hurried search of my bedroom and toilet. As I had only my

Four J^ears in a Red Hell

shorts, pants, shoes, and socks on, a shirt was quickly gotten
from my bedroom and given to me to put on. A silver medal
of the Blessed Virgin Mary on a silver chain, a gift of my
brother, hanging around my neck, was taken off. I was then
handcuffed with my hands behind my back. A policewoman
showed me a cardlike paper and spoke in Chinese, then in
English, saying, "You are arrested as an American spy." To
this I could only wryly smile. Another policeman took my
picture.

I was arrested!

My brain was flooded with thoughts and conjectures. I
thought the Korean cease-fire talks had been called off, that a
state of declared war existed between Red China and my
country, the U.S.A., and as a consequence I was being arrested
by the communists in retaliation against the U.S.A. I thought
I might be taken out and shot as hundreds of Chinese had been
since the beginning of the year. I also thought that I might be
questioned and given rough treatment for a few hours or days
and then deported, like other missionaries, as Bishop de
Vienne of Tientsin. I was in a daze. I did not know what was
in store for me.

I was then led out to the entrance of the compound where
I lived, and ordered to stand there, facing a group of what
seemed like 40 or 50 little children of the parish catechism
school with their teacher. These little children knew me and
loved me very much. Whenever they saw me, they would run
up and surround me, holding my hands and arms, all laughing
and talking at the same time.

Now it was so different!

These little creatures had evidently been drilled by the
communist police to gather where they did and clap, approv
ing my arrest. Children of lower primary school age, they
were too young to hide their emotions.

I shall never forget that scene!

Handcuffed, I looked at them. Their little faces were dis-

26

My Arrest

torted and torn by strong conflicting emotions: fear of the
cruel communist police; love and sympathy for me, in chains.
The poor little creatures were all crying. Some faintly clapped
their little hands. Under inhuman pressure, they were forced
to act against their finest, deepest, noblest sentiments. My
brain was full of thoughts. I thought of what I had heard, how
the Chinese communists had forced children to sign death
petitions, requesting the execution of their fathers, and wives
of their husbands. My heart went out to these tortured little
children before me. Their evident sympathy for me consoled
me. I blessed them, making a little sign of the cross with my
right hand, handcuffed behind my back, and I thought that
I needed no further proof or demonstration of the intrinsic
malice of communism that so distorted, so twisted and so
worked to destroy the finest, the noblest, the deepest senti
ments in the hearts of little children!

My picture was taken again and I was then ordered onto a
jeep, an American-made jeep, with 3 or 4 police guards. The
rest of the Sepo boarded a truck. I was then driven in front of
Fu Jen University, where all could see me in disgrace, in
chains, being driven away by the dreaded Sepo. We turned
south on the busy Hsi Szu Pai Lou Ta Chieh to the next street
south of Hsi Szu Pai Lou, where we turned east to Ts'ao Lan
Tzu Hutung, near the National Library. The jeep stopped at
No. 13 of the hutung, before a high red gate and blew its horn,
signaling to the guard to open the gate. As I looked at the
gate, I thought of the words Dante placed over the gates of
hell: "All hope abandon ye who enter here."

The gate slowly opened.

The jeep drove in. I was ordered out and placed in a little
room. I wondered what was next. Was I to be shot? Was I to be
deported immediately? Was I to be questioned then deported?
In about 5 minutes a policeman came, removed my handcuffs
and ordered me into a little nearby office where I was searched
and my rosary, watch, fountain pen, Sheaffer pencil, knife and

27

Four l[ears in a Red Hell

money were taken away from me. A list of these articles was
then written up and I signed it first in English, then in Chi
nese. Lastly my finger print was added.

I was then led to a dark, damp corridor in an old one-story
building, to Cell No. 10.

The heavy wooden door was opened with a clang of the
iron bolt and I was ordered to enter. The door was then
slammed and bolted with a bang.

I was in prison!

6

Cell No. 10

THE CELL WAS SMALL with a wooden kang (bed) in it. About
six prisoners., all Chinese, were in the cell. In silence, they
looked at me, then motioned me to sit down on the kang and
one of them said in Chinese: "What is your name?"

"Rui Ko Ni," I replied, giving my name in Chinese.

"What is your nationality?"

"Mei Kuo jen (American)."

They then told me their names.

When I got over the first shock of being imprisoned, I
looked around the ce!L|It was about 11 feet by 10 feet. The
wall was white and bare. There was no clock or calendar! I
thought of Robinson Crusoe who after being shipwrecked on
an island, cut a notch in a tree everyday to keep a record of
the passing days. Such I could not do, but I thought I would
have to make a special effort to keep track of the days as they
passed. A few days later, it became evident that this was
unnecessary because when I was obliged to write statements
or papers of my past activities, I could get the date for the
paper from the chu chang or cell leader. In other cells a calen
dar was made each month by a cell-mate and pasted usually
with soap on the wall.

f The kang, about 6 feet by 10 feet and 18 inches high, was
made of rough, wooden boards. The other cell mates had
rolled up their thin cotton mattresses which were about one
inch thick, and placed them against the wall. I

I There was one little window about 2 feet by 3 feet with

Four Years in a Red Hell

heavy iron bars. The floor was the bare ground; damp, black
earth. In one corner of the cell was a hole in the earthen floor
through which rats entered. There was another such hole
under the kang. A strongly stinking wooden bucket was used
as a urinal and in emergency cases for bowel movements. A
single 15 candle power electric light was in the center of the
ceiling. This burned all night. It was the only light for reading
newspapers (always communist) when they were allowed
and the other books of communist indoctrination. I wrote
many papers in this poor light.

Under the kang were two bowls each about 18 inches wide.
One was for drinking water which was issued hot or warm,
and the other for food which was usually wo tou, an almost
tasteless unleavened mixture of maize and water, which was
steamed. Most prisoners had a little cup with a toothbrush for
washing their teeth, and soap for washing their face and
hands as well as for washing their clothes. These were kept un
der the kang. Most prisoners had a small bundle of clothes,
usually a change in underwear and shirts. These were used
as pillows.

The daily order in the cell was about as follows:

Rising at 6:15

Toilet 6:30

Study (brainwashing) 6:45

Breakfast 8:00

Study (brainwashing) 9:00

Free period 12 : oo

Study (brainwashing) 1:30

Supper 4 : 3

Toilet 5:15

Study (brainwashing) 7:00

Retiring 9:30

On Sundays the study periods after breakfast and before
supper were dropped. Prisoners were free to sew clothes.
Some, those making progress in being brainwashed, were

30

Cell No. 10

allowed to play games as cards or other very simple games.
For these games prisoners made cards of two or three sheets
of paper pasted together with the figures drawn on them.
Others made boards and pieces for various other games out
of paper. Later, from 1953 on, a few prisoners bought manu
factured playing cards and other games. A favorite card game
was a kind of 500. Chinese chess was also played.

My imprisonment started about 5 P.M. o'clock. Prison sup
per was over. The cellmates asked me if I had eaten supper.
I told them I had had a heavy noon dinner and was not hun
gry. The events of the afternoon spoilt whatever appetite I
could have had.

I sat on the edge of the kang, next to the wall. One cell-mate
who knew a little English told me that all the cell-mates were
spies, friends of Truman, the President of the USA, whom the

communists had stigmatized as the enemy of the Chinese
i
people.

I suspected that one or all of the cell-mates were Sepo,
planted in the cell to observe me. Later I discarded this idea.
I soon got the idea that the Sepo need not plant any of their
members in the cells because die cell-mates with few excep
tions were all anxious to demonstrate how they had changed
from being anti-communist, Kuomintang ( KMT ) or American
agents, to pro-communists, by co-operating with the prison
authorities whenever and however possible. They readily and
vehemently joined in tou chengs.

A "tou cheng (accusation process)" consisted of many
gathering around a prisoner, shouting at him, cursing him,
insulting him, pointing fingers at him, while he usually stood
with head down. It was a nerve racking procedure. Often a
tou cheng lasted for hours. It was dreaded by all prisoners.
Few could stand it very long. It was commonly employed to
force a fellow prisoner to confess crimes or reveal his thoughts.

A pro-communist attitude was also shown by watching
closely other cell-mates for infractions of the prison rules or

Four Years in a Red Hell

for other reactionary indications, all of which would usually
be religiously reported to the chu chang to be relayed by him
to the officer.

Hence, the Sepo had many informers, many ''running dogs"
as the Chinese call such characters, many pro-communist ac
tivists among the prisoners. The Sepo need not use their own
members or agents to watch or spy on prisoners or to lead in
the tou chengs. The prisoners themselves supplied these.

The communists turned the prisoners on themselves, used
prisoners arrested as reactionaries, to punish or work on other
prisoners also arrested as reactionaries. The communist policy
of sowing discord and division amongst their enemies ob
tained even in prison.

At 9:45 P.M. the signal for retirement was given by an of
ficer blowing a whistle and shouting "shui, chao! (sleep)."

In a moment's time, all the cell was in activity. The other
cell mates quickly put away their books, unrolled their mat
tresses, took off their shirts and pants and lay down. I was
impressed by the speed and uniformity of action. No one
delayed. No one was at a loss what to do.

I had no mattress, no covering for the cool of the evening.
I saw a coat hanging on the wall and indicated that I would
like to use it as a cover, but the cell-mates forbade me to touch
it. It was against the rules to use others' belongings as I learned
later; the permission of the chu chang was necessary for such
and my chu chang offered no such permission.

So I lay on the hard wooden kang in a place allotted me by
the chu chang, next to the wall. All seven of us lay down on
the kang about 10 feet wide.

The light was not turned off. It was kept burning. This was
the policy throughout my prison experience. When the elec
tric current was cut off for one reason or the other, a lit candle
was brought into the cell

My First Court Session

I LAY DOWN for my first night in prison. After about fifteen
minutes, I heard the loud and chilling clanging of the bolted
lock of my cell door. The door opened and an officer called
"Rui Ko Nil"

I arose, the officer approached and asked if I were Rui Ko
Ni, to which I replied, "Yes."

He then motioned me to leave the cell. I started to put on
my shoes and the other cell-mates began to shout, "Kuai!
Ruai! ( Hurry! Hurry! ) ? They lost no opportunity to demon
strate to the officer how much a group of activists they had
become. I tried to lace my low top shoes but the cell-mates
hurried me and a few pushed me out.

I left the cell followed by the officer. Outside the building
was a soldier with a drawn pistol. I had never seen such a big
pistol. It looked like a big automatic 45, but longer and larger
than any I had ever seen. The officer handed me over to the
Sepo guard who shouted at me to walk towards the entrance
of the prison compound, ahead of him. He shouted, "Kuai!
Kuai!"

It was dark. As I passed through the entrance of the com
pound, I came into open ground. I could not see anything
beyond my immediate surroundings of about ten feet.

I hesitated, not knowing in which direction to proceed, and
feared that I might be tricked by my guard to walk into the
open to be shot by another for attempting to escape. My guard

33

Four Years in a Red Hell

was angered by my hesitation and shouted: "Tsou! Tsou!
Kuai! Kuai! (Go! Go! Quick! Quick!)."

I proceeded not knowing what to expect or whither I was
going. The guard pointed the direction to go and followed
close after me with his drawn pistol pointed at me and his
index finger dangerously near the trigger. This was the usual
manner the Sepo guards observed in taking a prisoner from
place to place.

After walking about 300 feet and making several turns, I
arrived before a row of rooms in a long, one storied building.
The guard ordered me to halt, then shouted, announcing that
he had arrived with me. I heard a reply, "Lai! ( Come in! ) ."
The guard then shouted at me to enter the door before which
we stood. I entered and found myself in Court Room No. 4
of the "People's" Military Court.

The court room was about 18 feet wide by about 27 feet
long. At one end was the judge sitting at a desk, the size and
shape of an ordinary office desk. To his right, at another such
desk sat the recorder, who took down in Chinese the minutes,
including the statements of the judge and prisoner. To the left
of the judge sat, in my case, the interpreter at a desk similar
to that of the judge.

In front of the judge, to his left, near the wall, sat the guard
with his pistol drawn and his finger near the trigger of his
pistol which he pointed to the concrete floor at my feet. To
the rear of the judge and to his right was a cabinet in which
were kept court records.

On the wall, to the rear and above the judge, was a picture
of the greatest quisling of history, the man who betrayed
600,000,000 Chinese, his fellow countrymen, to the Soviet
Union: Chairman Mao Tse-tung.

I was ordered by the Sepo guard to stand before a wooden
chair facing the judge, with my face about half a foot from an
electric light hung from the wall and surrounded by swarms
of insects that soon began to torment me by crawling over my

34

My First Court Session

face, head and neck and some biting me. I was forbidden to
scatter these pests away witli a slap or waving of my hand.
The light, moreover, so near me, pained my eyes. The Sepo
guard seized my spectacles and jerked them off, throwing
them on a nearby window sill. The judge, a thin, lean man,
who looked about 30 years old, eyed me for a minute or so
then ordered me to sit down. He spoke in Chinese. I spoke in
English. An interpreter translated for us.

I sat down.

"What is your name?"

"Rigney, in English; Rui Ko Ni, in Chinese," I replied.

"What is your full name?"

"Harold William Rigney."

"Where do you live?"

"Li Kwang Chiao, Nan Chieh, No. i."

"What is your nationality?"

"American."

"What is your occupation?"

"I am a Catholic priest, a missionary, the rector of Fu Jen
University."

"Now, tell me what crimes you have committed against the
Chinese ^people/ "

"I have committed no crimes against the Chinese people."

"SHIH MA! ( WHAT! )" he shouted at the top of his voice
as he banged his fist on his desk.

"CHAN CHI LAI! (Stand up!)"

I stood up. My head was soon surrounded by the swarm of
insects around the lamp and the glare of the electric light was
painful.

So started my trial that was to last three years and two
months.

The first phase of this ordeal lasted about sixty days and
nights. In the early part of this phase, the first week of my
trial, I stated clearly and emphatically, "I am a Catholic and

35

Four Years in a Red Hell

I will not give up my religion; I would rather die. Moreover,
I will not become a communist." The judge replied, "No one
asks you to give up your religion and you could not become a
communist even if you wanted to."

During this period of the first sixty days and nights, I was
allowed only two nights of rest. One was when I had a fever
with chills and the prison physician prescribed a night of rest.
The other was granted me by the judge with the evident
purpose of letting me realize how sweet a night's rest was,
even on boards, although I was tortured throughout the night
whenever I awoke with the dread that I would be called out
to court.

During this period, every night, I had one or two court
sessions from around bed time to after day break. A few times,
especially towards the end, I was allowed one or two hours of
sleep in the morning, before and during day-break. If I had
one session, it continued uninterrupted from bed time to day
break or after. If I had two sessions, the first ended around
mid-night and the second began around one or two o'clock.
During the break of one or two hours, I either was ordered by
the judge to sit on a rock or on the ground in the drill grounds
with a Sepo guard nearby or I was sent back to my wretched
cell to sit up, without sleeping. In either case I was ordered
to think over certain "crimes" I was supposed to have com
mitted or to examine my mind or conscience to bring to mem
ory or to move my will to recognize or admit "crimes/'

As a rule, I spent this time in earnest prayer.

I usually had one or two court sessions during the day: dur
ing the late morning and the late afternoon or just one of these
periods. I think I had about 150 court sessions during this
period of 60 days and 60 nights.

They were terrible nights and days!

8-

Wo Tou and Pai Tsai

I GRADUALLY WORE AWAY, becoming very thin. I was fat at the
time of my arrest, weighing 180 pounds which is much since
I am small boned. In the first weeks in prison, I dropped to
less than 100 pounds. I was very hungry since I could not eat
the food served me. The pigs in America eat better than I did.
Our regular food was wo tou and pai tsai.

"Wo tou" was three or four ounces of a poor grade of corn
meal, compared to American standards. This was mixed with
water without salt or any leaven as yeast or baking soda,
shaped like a thimble and steamed. One bite and I lost my
appetite. It took me about four months to get used to it and
eat enough to stave off hunger for an hour or two. During
these early months, evidently to keep me alive, I was given
saltless, tasteless boiled rice which I could eat, along with a
little wo tou.

"Pai tsai" was boiled water with a little Chinese cabbage
in it. To call this soup would be misleading, since soup ac
cording to our idea must contain some meat or fish. I liked the
pai tsai, but for the first three months I was given from one-
third to one-half a bowl of it, while the other prisoners re
ceived a full bowl. A bowl held about three quarters of a pint
of liquid. There was no evident reason for reducing the one
item of food I could easily take, unless it was a scheme to
starve or undernourish me.

We ate twice a day, in late morning and late afternoon. By
night I was very hungry.

37

Four Years in a Red Hell

Throughout my imprisonment in Ts'ao Lan Tzu, we were
served special meals about 12 times a year. We prisoners
looked forward to these meals weeks in advance and ate them
like hungry dogs, eating as fast as possible they tasted so
good! These special meals consisted of Kan Fan ( dry, steamed
rice) or man tou (Chinese steamed wheat flour bread) with
meat soup. The meat was cut to the size of bouillon cubes and
each prisoner received 3 or 4 of these pieces, or none at all. In
my first year in prison, I think I had received from the gov
ernment at the most 3 or 4 ounces of meat.

How I longed for a good meal!

How I longed for salt! I was salt-starved. Our food was
deficient in this very important element of diet. Most of the
prisoners had their own private supply of salt, which they
had either purchased or had sent to them by relatives. I was
not allowed to purchase salt. Neither was I allowed to receive
any kinds of supplies, food or clothing, from the outside.

A cell-mate who was quite decent, had some salt which he
had purchased. Each afternoon when hot drinking water was
issued to us, he would put a big pinch of salt in his wan or
bowl of water. I used to watch him and long for a pinch. One
day when no one was looking, I asked him to please give me a
pinch of salt. He did, putting it in my bowl of water.

My! how delicious the water tasted!

I still feel grateful to this kind young man for his real char
ity and would like to meet him someday to thank him and
make returns for that pinch of salt.

About a week later, I asked him again for a pinch of salt but
he refused. I thought he refused because his stock of salt was
down and I felt no resentment towards him. Later I learned
it was against the rule to give anything to a fellow prisoner
without permission of the chu chang or cell leader since giv
ing things was an imperialistic way to make friends, and

38

WoTouandPaiTsai

friendship between cell-mates was strictly forbidden and the
taboo was rigidly enforced. Hell is like this. There are no
friendships there.

During the first year in prison I considered the most im
portant item to purchase or have sent by relatives or friends
was salt. Next in order of importance was toilet paper and
then soap for toilet and laundry uses.

For toilet paper, a rough kind of paper about a foot and a
half by two feet and a half was obtained and torn into pieces
about z l /2 inches by 4 inches.

The government supplied toilet paper and soap only to
those prisoners who could not purchase them either because
they had no money on hand or lacked permission to buy any
thingor else failed to receive supplies from outside the
prison either because no one had the courage to send them
needed supplies, or permission to secure such was denied
them by the government.

Those prisoners who depended on the communist govern
ment of China for such necessities as toilet paper and soap
were pitiable indeed. The supplies they received from the
government were inadequate, consequently they kept their
eyes open for scraps of paper of any kind, that could be used
for toilet paper. If they saw any, they snatched it up for fu
ture use. They also were on the alert for used laundry water
with a heavy amount of suds. This they used to wash their
clothes.

I was allowed after a month or so in prison to buy toilet
paper and soap. The rats, however, ate the soap in a day's
time and for about four months I washed my face and hands
as well as handkerchiefs in cold water without soap.

My first morning in prison was spent in a court session that
lasted until long after day break. I returned from court to my
cell after the time for rising. I was very tired from the first

39

Four Years in a Red Hell

night's ordeal and lay down on the wooden kang to rest and
sleep. The cell-mates soon swarmed around me, telling me
it was forbidden to sleep during the day time.

It was one of the first mornings in prison that I washed my
face for the first time. I had returned from the court early
enough to get a short sleep of about an hour or so. When the
signal for rising was given, everybody jumped up, dressed and
began to wash.

The chu chang washed first in about a pint of water, wash
ing his face and hands; then others followed.

I was last.

The water was full of dirt, etc. from the face and hands of
six cell-mates,

I objected to washing in this and tried to expkin the utter
unsanitary nature of me using such water. I told the cell
mates that certain eye diseases were common in China and
that the Chinese were completely or partially immune to them
but foreigners like me were not. This only brought me much
abuse from the cell-mates who insisted from then on that I
should wash last, using their dirty water. In a few days, my
eyes were bloodshot from an infection of some sort for which
I received no medical care.

40

9-

Bodily Filth, Lice and Intelligence Work

JULY AND AUGUST are hot and humid days in Peking. I was
arrested on July 25th, 1951, in the midst of the hot season. In
my living quarters at Fu Jen, I bathed two or three times a
day on rising, on retiring and usually in the late afternoon.

In prison it was otherwise. During the hot season and
autumn, from July 25th, to around mid-November, I had in
all only two or three sponge baths in my cell with about one
quart of cold water. I was allowed no better opportunities to
bathe. My first hot bath was in mid-November. During this
time the residue of perspiration and dirt and Peking is no
torious for its dust accumulated on me.

I was wretched.

I often requested the court to allow me a hot bath but was
always told that I had to confess first.

The cell-mates heaped insults on me ? telling me that I gave
off a disagreeable body odor, instead of reporting this to the
chu chang with the intention of him arranging that I take a
hot bath.

One day, the chu chang shouted at me that he could smell
me, and that this was very disagreeable to him. He then or
dered me to sit in the corner as far as possible from him.

On such occasions I replied that all I needed was a hot bath.

Before long I was full of lice. Most of the prisoners had
lice, which they picked up in prison if they did not have them
before their arrest.

Later, when the communists accused the Americans of

41

Four Ifears in a Red Hell

carrying on germ warfare in Korea, whenever a cell-mate
found lice on himself, he usually pointed to me saying words
such as: "These came from that American imperialist." My
reply, whenever I gave one, was that I had no lice when I
entered prison.

Later, searching for lice on one's clothing became a daily
routine. Each prisoner undressed, thoroughly examining his
various items of clothing for vermin. In the winter time, when
the cells were cold, prisoners covered their unclothed bodies
with their short cotton coats ( mien aou ) . I always felt relieved
when I discovered and killed any of these insects. The more I
found, the more relieved I felt. The most lice I ever found in
one search were nine. I became quite expert in the technique
of lice hunting.

That such an occupation could be a mental relief is an indi
cation of the dullness of the prison life at Ts'ao Lan Tzu.

During the first days of my court sessions, the judge in
sisted that I was a spy.

I denied this. At one of the sessions of the early part of my
trial, the time of which I do not remember, the judge informed
me that in one of my monthly reports to my Superior General
in Rome, I gave the price of millet or hsiao mi, the staple food
of North China. This was economic intelligence, he said,
which was as important as military intelligence.

He added that it was this economic intelligence that I gave
to the Vatican and America, that was responsible for the eco
nomic embargo Washington placed on China.

So he was holding me responsible for the economic embargo
which was doing so much harm to the economics of China.

I tried to explain that I reported to my Superior General
the price of millet at times of crises, in the past inflation, when
prices of commodities sky-rocketed, in order to explain why
we at Fu Jen increased salaries, to keep up with the cost of
living. In the early year of the communist occupation salaries
were reckoned in terms of catties or pounds of millet.

Bodily Filth, Lice and Intelligence Work

The judge became very angry and said I was arguing and
that I was not allowed to argue but only to confess my crimes,
accuse myself and others.

I sent my monthly reports to my Superior General, copies
of which were sent to Father Ralph of Chicago, Illinois, by
mail from Peking, or by travellers leaving China for Hong
Kong where Father Joseph Henkels, S.V.D., forwarded them
on to their destination.

On one occasion a friend who was leaving Tientsin by ship
for Hong Kong took two monthly reports of mine to be de
livered to Father Henkels in Hong Kong for remailing. This
person was searched by a customs officer who found and
confiscated these reports. The customs officer assured this
person the reports would be returned in a few days.

But the days and weeks passed, and no reports were ever
returned.

The judge then told me what I am certain was another lie,
namely that the court had all these monthly reports of mine
to Rome and Chicago and that I could not hide anything from
the court but would be forced to confess everything about
them. If I failed to confess any item of these reports, the court
would know that I was dishonest.

He then emphasized that my reports contained economic
intelligence.

After about three or four days I said that if the communist
government considered this as intelligence work, inquiring
about the price of millet from the market reports in the news
paper and informing others about it, then I did do intelligence
work, but I was not a professional spy.

This angered him and he pounded the desk shouting that I
was a spy and that was all there was to it.

I then spent about two weeks of court sessions of night and
day, about forty sessions in all, confessing the contents of my
monthly reports in my efforts to prevent strikes at Fu Jen,
which were called acts of sabotaging of the progressive move-

43

Four Years in a Red Hell

ment; the Survey of the Church, of North China, which I had
conducted and was considered a "crime" according to the
communists; as well as the rumors I had relayed to my O.S.S.
friend and the U. S. Consulate friends. After these sessions, I
told the judge I had no more to confess.

44

10-

Condemned to Death

WHEN I TOLD the judge I had no more to confess, he became
furious, pounded on his desk and shouted: "Are you an O.S.S.
agent or a State Department agent?"

"I am an agent of neither, although I reported intelligence
to them as I have confessed," I replied.

He then ordered the Sepo guard to put fetters, which were
at hand, on me.

The guard ordered me to sit on the cement floor with my
legs stretched out. He then proceeded to place these fetters
which were of rough, rusty, dirty iron on me. He fastened
them with an iron bolt that he hammered tight with a heavy
hammer making loud, dull, bangs.

The judge then ordered the guard to take me to the drill
grounds where I was obliged to walk up and down for what
seemed like about fifteen minutes until my ankles were raw
and bleeding from the fetters. I was then returned to the court
and ordered to stand at attention before the judge.

He looked at me and repeated his question, "Are you an
O.S.S. agent or a State Department agent?"

"I am an agent of neither, though I gave intelligence to them
as I have admitted," I replied.

The judge banged his desk and ordered me handcuffed.

The Sepo guard seized my hands and as roughly as he
could, handcuffed them behind my back. There was no chain
between each cuff, so that my wrists almost touched. The

45

Four Years in a Red Hell

handcuffs were rough, rusty and dirty and in a day or so cut
into my skin.

The judge then eyed me and shouted again: "Are you an
O.S.S. agent or a State Department agent?"

"I am neither, although I gave intelligence to them as I
have confessed," I replied again for the third time.

The judge then took a sheet of paper, about the size of
typewriting paper and wrote on it, as though he were signing
it, and looking at me with a steady, cool look said, "You are
condemned to death!"

I was stunned but calm.

I looked at the judge, the recorder and the interpreter and
hoped that one day one of them would leave the evil path of
communism and tell the truth about me: that I had been
falsely accused of being a spy and had been shot because I
had refused to make a false confession.

Therefore, to make a formal declaration that the various
members of the court could note and remember, I said, "I die
a martyr of truth."

"You die an imperialist spy/*

The judge motioned me to leave the court room.

I slowly walked to the door, dragging my fetter chains on
the floor. The pain of the fetters was unnoticed by me,
crowded out of my mind by the thought of my approaching
death.

As I reached the door, I stopped. The interpreter rushed to
my side. "Ah! Rui Ko Ni is breaking, he wants to confess," he
must have thought.

But I turned to the judge and said, "Since I am going to die,
I want a priest. I am a Catholic and we Catholics want a priest
before we die. You say you guarantee freedom of religion,
therefore you must allow me to see a priest."

"There is no time for such! Get out of here!"

As I left the court, I heard a bugle blow and saw a number
of military guards rush out of their barracks.

Condemned to Death

'"These are the firing squad/' I thought.

With the armed guard at my rear, I slowly walked towards
the drill grounds, to die.

I felt the bullets of the firing squad piercing my chest and
heart, as I thought I would die standing before a firing squad
rather than the traditional way of kneeling down and being
shot in the back of the head by one bullet.

I said my final act of contrition and offered my life for the
conversion of China, as well as for the eternal salvation of my
near relatives, the spiritual and temporal welfare of all my
relatives, benefactors and friends and lastly for the spiritual
welfare of my persecutors.

My mind was preoccupied with these thoughts and prayers.
I regarded little of my surroundings.

I felt a deep sense of peace and even joy at the thought that
as a missionary, bearing testimony to Christ, I was to die a
martyr as countless missionaries and apostles before me had!
I had read much about these heroes who died for Christian
virtue: usually faith. Now I was to join this noble group! a
martyr for another Christian virtue: the truth.

God knew I was dying a martyr. The world might be de
ceived by the lies of my communist executioners and consider
I died a spy. Perhaps my friends might never know or even
believe that I died a martyr but God would, and that was all
that mattered. God and my soul were all that counted then
and my martyrdom was being offered for those who would
perhaps pass me off as a priest, a missionary, untrue to his
calling, who engaged in spying and was executed for such
crimes.

So I trudged on, handcuffed and in fetters.

I reached the drill grounds and looked around and noted
that on two sides were bare walls, while the other two sides
were open.

I did not know before which wall I should stand to face the
firing squad and be shot

47

Four Years in a Red Hell

Stopping I turned to my guard for instructions as to which
wall to proceed. The guard became angry and shouted, "Tsou!
Tsou! (Go! Go!)"

"Well," I thought, "I am not to die now but later, most
likely this afternoon." I recalled that since the beginning of
1951, hundreds of others had died in Peking, being shot in the
afternoon, at the Tien Ch'iao (Bridge of Heaven).

The Tien Ch'iao was in the southern city of Peking near
Tien Tan (Temple of Heaven) . Condemned prisoners, bound
hand and foot, with a strip of paper on their back, at right
angles like a long fin, with their crimes written on it, were
driven on trucks around Peking, through the most crowded
streets as Wang Fu Ching Ta Chieh ( Morrison Street ) , so the
terrorized people could see them and learn what was the fate
of those who dared oppose the communist government of
Mao Tse-tung.

These poor creatures were then driven to the Tien Ch'iao
roughly, and cruelly moved or thrown from the truck. Each
was ordered to kneel down while the Sepo executioner, brand
ishing his rifle, to express his delight in murdering a "criminal"
and "enemy of the 'people'/' got behind the bent figure, took
aim at the back of his head, and fired.

On one occasion a friend of mine saw a truck of condemned
prisoners being driven down Wang Fu Ching Ta Chieh. To
the rear of each condemned prisoner was a Sepo guard. One
courageous prisoner shouted "Wan Sui, Chiang Chieh Shih
(Long live Chiang Kai Shek)." The cruel brute of a commu
nist soldier, a Sepo guard, behind him, became furious. He
beat the condemned patriot over the head with the butt of
his rifle, then gagged him so he could speak no more.

The onlooking people, already terrorized, were horrified by
this beastliness.

11

Cell-Mates and the Communists'
Court Procedure

As SOON AS I entered the cell, with my hands handcuffed be
hind me and in fetters, the cell-mates began to shout abusive
language at me and quickly surrounded me. They forced me
to kneel on the ground. I feared one would get behind me
and push me forward on my face. I would be unable to pre
vent this if it were attempted. So I managed to move nearer
a wall with my back as close to it as possible to prevent any
one from getting behind me.

The cell-mates demanded that I speak Chinese. They
claimed I could speak Chinese and only pretended to be un
able to do so. They pushed me from one to the other, shouting
all the while, as I was knocked from side to side, back and
forth like a cork tumbler or what the Chinese call a pu tao
weng. I said just about all the Chinese I knew, with my poor
pronunciation and disregard of tones. The cell-mates shouted
that I could speak Chinese and should say more. I repeated
what I had said over and over again.

It should have been evident to anyone whose mother tongue
was Chinese that I was unable to speak their language.

One cell-mate, an elderly Manchu physician of seventy-two
years of age, sat in his place, declining to join in torturing me.
Soon the chu chang turned on him and ordered him to partici
pate in the tou cheng. The elderly gentleman, for such he was,
every inch of him, slowly shifted himself until he came to the

49

Four Years in a Red Hell

edge of the kang and started to reprimand me in tones and in
a manner that it was evident to me that he was in full sym
pathy for me. He was obliged to say something by way of a
reprimand or else undergo torture and the poor old gentleman
was daily suffering plenty of that at the hands of the rest of
the cellmates who proved themselves to be "running dogs" of
the communists.

This went on for one, two or three hours. I do not remem
ber. It is strange how one can be tortured for a long time and
lose the sense of the duration of the torture.

The mockery was brought to a stop when I was called to
court.

When the court session opened, it was evident from the
questions of the judge that I was not to be shot soon. The death
sentence he had passed on me a few hours previously was only
a bluff, another deception, one more lie, of "the children of
darkness/' to trick me into a confession. Evidently the judge
hoped that when he condemned me to death, I would fall on
my knees, beg for my life, buy my life by confessing falsely
that I was a spy, an agent of either the O.S.S. or the State
Department. But I did not do this. His treachery failed.

The bugle I had heard and the armed soldiers I had seen
leaving their barracks, in the early morning when I left the
court expecting to be shot, was simply the changing of the
guard and not the assembling of an execution squad, as I had
thought.

At almost every court session after this for two years, the
judge threatened to shoot me. He did this so often that it soon
little bothered me. He wanted to shoot me, of this I have little
doubt, but his decision or wish was not final.

Once during these first sixty days, he told me, with his face
contorted with hatred, that he could kill me with the same
eagerness and lack of compassion that he had when killing
a fly.

Cell-Mates and the Communists Court Procedure

So spoke a judge of the communist military court, a judge
who is obliged by tradition, professional ethics, and the laws
of civilized governments to take an impassionate attitude, an
unprejudiced view towards a prisoner being tried!

"In the "people's democracies,' court procedure is different
from that in the 'imperialist' countries," I was told over and
over again with long and full explanations by my judge, chu
changs and cell-mates.

. In the courts of the "imperialist" countries, prisoners are
punished for what they confess, not for what they do not
confess.

On the other hand, in the courts of the "people's democra
cies" as here in the "people's" China, prisoners are punished
not for what they confess but for what they do not confess.
The procedure is so simple, so human! Just confess your
crimes and you will be forgiven! No one is clearly told what
crimes he is charged with, either at the time of his arrest or
during his trial. But he must confess the crimes he is charged
with.

As a consequence, almost every prisoner in Ts'ao Lan Tzu,
especially in 1951 and 1952, embarked on a program of con
fessing every possible crime he ever committed or could have
committed. He exaggerated his past activities, minor offenses
or peccadilloes into grave and huge crimes. He often multi
plied these. This was done in the hope of confessing the crimes
listed against him and also to demonstrate how tender his
conscience had become, how much he now looked at his past
in the light of the "people," in the hope of saving his life, or
receiving a lighter sentence or even of being released.

Some prisoners even falsely confessed that they had com
mitted one or more murders.

The elderly Manchu physician, mentioned above, made
about one hundred false confessions, under torture of the
cell-mates, and in the hope of satisfying the court, The cell
mates, running dogs of the communists, would tou cheng the

51

Four Years in a Red Hell

elderly gentleman of seventy-two, this first-class Chinese
scholar of the old type, subjecting him to various tortures.

I remember once when I returned from a court session, the
elderly gentleman was passing through one of these ordeals.

He was standing up with extended arms, near the stinking
urine bucket, while the other cell-mates proceeded with their
discussion of the study matter. Whenever the elderly gentle
man even budged, they shouted and abused him. Finally the
old man could stand it no longer and collapsed. He was then
hauled up and thrown on the kang to revive as best his ad
vanced years and declining physiological powers allowed him
to, so he could be further tortured.

He won relief only when he indicated his willingness to
confess and confessed something. After a short respite of a
few hours or a day, when his confession was declared inade
quate by his judge, he would be subjected to more tortures.
This went on for about half a year, during which time I was
moved four times, and was told by my new chu chang that
the elderly Manchu had eventually fully confessed. He was
then sentenced.

I fear this venerable man is still rotting in one of the many
prisons of Peking, serving a long sentence, making match
boxes or the like.

"'Around the beginning of 1953, the prison officers changed
their tune and of course the chu chang followed suit. We
were told that there were two elements in the treatment of
our crimes. One was clemency granted for full, complete con
fession accompanied with reformation. This had been over
emphasized in the past. The other element which had been
ignored by the prisoners, we were told, was expiation of
crimes the sentences.

So, after tricking the average prisoner into accusing him
self of crimes, real or fictitious, known or unknown to the
court, they sentence him, according to the evidence they have,

Cell-Mates and the Communists' Court Procedure

to serve a term, based on his confessed crimes, some of which
the court first learned about from the prisoner's confession.

Another characteristic of the court procedure of commu
nist China is the deprivation of advisors whom a prisoner can
trust.

A prisoner on being arrested is locked up, held incommuni
cado, deprived of calling a lawyer for advice. He is allowed no
counsel. He is tortured, pressed, cajoled, tricked into a con
fession. The judge is supposed to be the friend and advisor of
the prisoner.

So a person in the communist China I know, is guilty on
being arrested of crimes of which he is not made acquainted
by the court. He has no counsel; is forbidden a counsel and
prevented from having one. He is not allowed to defend him
self, to explain any of his conduct of the past which might be
presented as evidence of crimes. He is not allowed to deny
the crimes for which he was arrested such a denial would be
an additional crime. He is allowed only to accuse himself and
others; to confess his crimes and implicate others. This cruel
mockery is called justice, communist justice.
/ I often wondered how many unfortunate men and women,
Chinese and foreign, of China, have been executed or are
serving long sentences for no other reason than that they re
fused to admit crimes they never committed!

Prisoner Wang was an English speaking Chinese cell-mate
who had studied in the U.S.A. He had been a businessman
with many American connections. He was a likable person
with a pleasant personality, and had first been assigned to
< help" me after I had been arrested only about a week or ten
days. He pressed me to confess I was an American agent. He
never once advised me to tell the truth, He dinned in my ear
day after day, week after week, month after month, that I
should confess I was an American agent, an O.S.S. or an
F.B.I, man, and stick to it, and I would soon be deported. He

53

Four Jears in a Red Hell

was fundamentally a kind man but he could and did abuse
me much. He hoped to win his release over my dead or long-
imprisoned body, inducing me to confess truthfully or falsely,
that I was an American agent. Yet, I understood and forgave
him. His wife, he said, had died just three months before his
arrest, leaving six children, ranging from a baby to a nineteen-
year-old daughter. Wang was doing his best to get free to
return to his motherless children.

The court knew from the confession of a Chinese prisoner
who had been employed by O.S.S., with the rank of a colonel,
that I had known some O.S.S. personnel, had searched Fu Jen
for a radio of the former German Embassy, and had told
O.S.S. about rumors concerning the communist army near
Peiping.

I had become acquainted with O.S.S. personnel in the
U. S. Army Airbase, Accra, Gold Coast, when an officer of this
branch of the army approached me asking me to help in a
marriage case, in which no collecting of intelligence was in
volved. He asked my assistance to prevent a marriage between
an American of the U. S. Army and a suspected Nazi, who was
further suspected of trying to gain admission into the U. S. by
marrying an American.

I also spoke to these O.S.S. personnel about local Gold
Coast geography and tribes as well as personalities.

In Tunis, I also knew a few of the O.S.S. personnel.

Wang, who had been instructed by the judge regarding me,
insisted that my connection with O.S.S. in Peking classified
me an O.S.S. "Formal enrollment and reception of a salary are
not needed for one to officially become a member of the
O.S.S./' he explained, according to communist standards.

Hence, I finally said, "From this point of view, I am an
O.S.S."

In the subsequent court session, the judge asked me where
I joined, how did I apply for membership, what kind of train
ing did I receive, etc.

54

Cell-Mates and the Communists' Court Procedure

After a few minutes of this, I said, "Well, judge, if you mean
that being an O.S.S. involves all this, then I am no O.S.S. I
never joined the O.S.S. or received training from them. I knew
some O.S.S. and relayed rumors to them but that was all my
connections with them."

At that the judge became very angry, shouting at me,
pounding on his desk, reprimanding and cursing me, calling
me a guttersnipe, a shameless, cunning spy, etc. But I held
to this denial*

55

-

12

Confessions of a Sleeping Prisoner

As I STATED above, during my first sixty days and nights of
imprisonment, I had two full nights of rest. In the latter part of
these days, my physical reserves were at an end.

I was subjected to the nerve racking of long court sessions
during the night as well as the day. I was exhausted from lack
of sleep. I was tortured by a gnawing hunger, I was covered
with bodily dirt and weeks of unwashed perspiration. My
one and only set of clothes, that were literally falling to shreds,
were infested with lice. My ankles and wrists, sore and bleed
ing from the fetters and handcuffs I wore, were in extreme
pain. My legs and arms were swollen from these shackles.
Often, especially in the long night court sessions when I per
spired profusely, I was tormented by thirst. I had never cared
much for tea, but often as I was pkgued by thirst, as the judge
quaffed cup after cup of tea, serving himself and the recorder
and interpreter, my mouth watered in vain, for a cup of tea.
I thought that if I ever would become a free man again, I
would drink tea, a gallon of tea. I had been subjected to end
less humiliation and insults.

In this state of wretchedness I was called out of my cell one
night around 9:45 P.M., the time for retiring. There was
nothing unusual about such a call. But this call opened up
an unusual experience for me, unusual even for my Ts'ao Lan
Tzu experiences.

The Sepo guard directed me to a room in a courtyard ad
joining the court rooms.

56

Confessions of a Sleeping Prisoner

The male interpreter was there. He told me to sit on a soft
sofa. This was unusual treatment apparent kindness. He then
began to talk to me in soft, unctuous words, explaining how
I could help myself by confessing my crimes. Such would lead
to clemency on the part of the government. The court had
dealt harshly, it is true, with me, he explained, but I would
experience a bountiful generosity on the part of the govern
ment if I would only confess. It would not take long, only
about an hour of confessing to clear up my case. Why be so
obstinate? The government did not want me to suffer but to
enjoy life. I was only harming myself by being stubborn, pre
venting the government from showing how benevolent it
could be.

So he went on for about one hour. I, struggling to keep
awake, told him I would like to clear up my case but I had no
crimes to confess.

He was a little ruffled by this but continued his cajoling
line. I was favorably impressed by his Tdndness."

I was then led to the court room and told to sit down.

This was unusual.

Formerly, for weeks, I was obliged to stand at attention
during my court sessions. This night, however, the judge mag
nanimously told me to sit down.

I saw cats and dogs running all over the court room. Cats
were jumping in and out of the waste paper basket at the side
of the judge. After a few questions put to me by the judge, my
delirious brain could fully function no more.

I went to sleep.

AH I remember is that I said, "Yes" to many questions the
judge put to me. How long this went on, I do not remember.
It stretched out into the hours.

Finally, I came to.

I opened my heavy eyes and raised my nodding head to look
at the judge and the cats I saw jumping in and out of his waste
paper basket.

57

Four Years in a Red Hell

A fear suddenly came over me. "I have admitted too much.
I have confessed too much/' I thought.

Then I said, "What I have said tonight must not be taken as
true and valid unless I confirm it."

The judge called the session ended and ordered me to re
turn to my cell.

As I arose and walked to the door, dragging along my
fetters with my hands handcuffed behind my back, the in
terpreter quickly picked up the red fingerprint ink pad, seized
my right index finger, rubbed red ink on it and pressed to this
finger the lower right hand part of the paper with the ques
tions of the night put to me by the judge and my answers.

My fingerprint was on this paper. Whatever I had said that
evening was unsigned but bore my fingerprint forced from
shackled hands. It made an impressive document for an inter
national court, or for one of the deluded or deluding com
munist sympathizers from the western world, (many of whom
wear the garb of a clergyman, or carry the title of a barrister
at law, a scientist, a politician) , visiting Peking.

I was much disturbed by this forcing a fingerprint from me.
I was certain I had incriminated myself, while I slept from
sheer exhaustion or had been put into a trance.

The "kindness" of the interpreter and the judge were only
deceptions of cunning communist court officials to trick me
into a false confession. I knew from past experiences and re
liable testimony that communists are never to be trusted. Their
words mean nothing. Only their deeds can be accepted. Yet, I
had given them my confidence, in a sleeping condition, and I
feared they had led me into a false confession.

The judge opened my next session on the following night
with words like these: "Last night you confessed very well.
You were honest for a change. You confessed that you led a
conspiracy to assassinate Chairman Mao Tse-tung. This is the
most serious crime committed in China since the liberation.

58

Confessions of a Sleeping Prisoner

This is the one crime for which the government refuses to
grant clemency. You shall be shot. You cannot be pardoned
or have your death sentence commuted. Now, show your good
attitude and help the government by confessing all our
leaders whom you planned to assassinate, who your leader in
this plot was; who your co-conspirators were and who were
under you. If you help the government in this way, you shall
not be shot immediately, but after a time."

I was dumbfounded.

My head began to swim.

It seemed the court room changed. I always think of the
court room as having curtains hung from the ceiling on either
side of the judge on that night.

I told the judge I never heard of this plot until days after it
was to have been committed, October ist, 1950. He said this
could not be true since the police had never released the news
about this plot, whereas I had spoken about it a few nights
previously at a dinner in the British Embassy. To this I replied
that I had heard of this plot from a speech Ch'en Yuan, the
Chinese president of Fu Jen University, had given at Fu Jen
University. Ch'en Yuan warned the staff and student body of
Fu Jen to beware of conspirators, that there had been a plot
to murder Mao Tse-tung by a shell fired at him from a trench
mortar as he reviewed, on the Tien An Men, the October ist
parade. He further stated that two foreigners, Riva, an Italian,
and Yamaguchi, a Japanese, were to be executed as important
members of this plot, but they would not be executed
immediately.

I then continued that nowhere in the civilized world is the
testimony of a drunken or sleeping man accepted as valid and
stated that last night I was asleep when I confessed this.

After repeating this several times, I proceeded to the third
point in my fight to save my life.

"I am your prisoner," I said. "My feet are fettered and my
hands are handcuffed. I am helpless. You can shoot me if you

59

Four ^Years in a Red Hell

want. I cart do nothing. But/* I continued, "if you shoot me,
the man you want would still be at large. I am not the man
you want."

Throughout that hectic night, I hammered at the last two
points: "I was asleep, consequently my confession is invalid
and I am not the man you want."

The judge all the while insisted that the court had its own
evidence of my guilt in this matter. I should stop my arguing,
stop defending myself and confess, show my good attitude,
my willingness to help the government by confessing and re
vealing afl. my accomplices.

At last, he said, the court would investigate the matter
further and deal most severely with me if more evidence were
found incriminating me in this plot.

He then proceeded to question me about other matters.
He never reverted to this plot again.

A month later, on October i or 2, 1951, an issue of the Jen
Min Jih Pao of Peking, the official paper of the Peking com
munist party, was passed around to the prisoners, as a privi
lege. In those days no daily paper was issued regularly to us,
as later.

A cell-mate, who knew a little English and had read this
issue of October i or 2, told me he had read about a plot to
murder Mao Tse-tung in October, 1950, and that the plot had
been discovered in time to prevent it and arrest the conspira
tors. He added that two foreigners had been shot as con
spirators in this plot.

One was Riva, an Italian, and the other was Yamaguchi, a
Japanese.

A cold chill went down my back.

Both Riva and Yamaguchi were Catholics whom I knew.
Both had devoted wives who were devout Catholics and each
had a lovely family of four children. Moreover, shortly before
my arrest I had met Mrs. Riva, an American by birth, who told

60

Confessions of a Sleeping Prisoner

me the police had informed her that Tony, her husband, would
be deported in a month or two. This devout Catholic and de
voted wife had sold her own excellent library of several hun
dred volumes for waste paper, but kept her husband's library
for his use after his release. The police urged her to leave China
but she said she wanted to wait until Tony was deported and
leave with him.

Mrs. Yamaguchi I met a week or so before my arrest. I met
her in the Peking police ofBce for the foreigners, where she
had come to pick up her exit visa. She was a Doctor of Philos
ophy from the Sorbonne, and spoke excellent French but poor
English. In my best French, which was very poor, I inquired
about her husband, herself and her family. She later told Mrs.
Riva that she was pleased that I had had the courage to speak
to her, and even in the police station. She said everybody else
avoided her and feared to speak to her.

At the news of the murdering of these two men by the com
munists, I felt shocked. I also felt extremely sorry for their
widows and children.

For three years I did not know whether or not I would be
shot because of my refusing to "reform my thinking" to satisfy
the government and to a lesser extent because in my sleep, I
had allowed myself to be cajoled into a false confession of
having been the leader of this "plot" to assassinate Mao
Tse-tung,

61

13-

Squatting

"BY THE LIVING GOD, I swear I am not and never was an agent
or spy of the American Government/' I cried out.
"Ha! ha! He believes in God!"

For days and nights the judge had been pressing me to con
fess that I was an American agent or spy. He had put me in
fetters and hand-cuffs; he had sentenced me to death; he had
kept me awake; he had pressed and made himself hoarse
shouting and cursing me, to confess I was an American agent.
I had stoutly denied I was, or had ever been, an American
agent.

At one of these court sessions, I realized that I was in a
position in which an oath is allowed by Catholic theology.

"By the Living God, I swear I am not and never was an
American agent or spy," I cried out.

At this, the female interpreter, who I was told was an Ameri
can-born Chinese, threw up her arms and rollicked back and
forth in hilarious derision of me.

"Ha! ha!" this blasphemous cadre of the communist gov
ernment of China laughingly shouted in contempt, "He be
lieves in God!" So spoke a court official of a government that
professes freedom of religious belief and forbids ridicule of
religion. It is hard for the devil to hide his tail.

This pressing me to confess being an American agent went
on for days and nights.

My judge had given me to understand that I would soon be

62,

Squatting

released if I cleared up my confession. When I told him the
truth, he would usually look at a paper before him, evidently
to see if my statement agreed with his paper and then look up
at me, pound on his desk, and shout, "Liar! Your statement
is a lie!"

It became evident to me that his idea of truth differed from
mine. To me a statement is true when it agrees with reality.
To him it was true when it agreed with the instructions his
superiors gave him or, as Tito, the Russian-Serbian chu chang
I had, put it so often: "Truth is what the 'people' say it is." And
of course the "people" in China are Mao Tse-tung and all who
agree with him and support him.

I soon began to think that the communists, even when they
talked English, spoke a different language from the English
speaking world, including me. "Peace," "democracy," "to
help," "liberty," "the people," certainly have one set of mean
ings in current English and quite another and arbitrary one,
when employed by communists.

I came to the conclusion that no prisoner could get any
where with his communist captors until he spoke the same
language as they did.

This conclusion of mine was of course wrong, but it is one
a prisoner may easily draw and put into practice, in the face
of the bewilderment, helplessness, and confusion in which he
eventually finds himself, and the many and prolonged tortures
to which he is subjected.

Hence, I began to think in those awful days that I would
have to accept the communists' concept of truth.

Add to this the idea I had, that the communists were chiefly
concerned in destroying my reputation, one way or the other,
to justify their seizure of Fu Jen University.

Prisoner Wang, the merchant, was in contact with my judge
and prison officers. He received instructions from them in his
assignment to "help" me that is, force me one way or the other

63

Four Years in a Red Hell

to confess I was an American agent. He repeatedly told me
that there was a large deportation of prisoners of foreign
nationalities scheduled for October 1951, and that if I cleared
up my confessions I would surely be among these deportees.

Then one night the judge used a new torture and a new
accusation.

He ordered me to squat. The Chinese often squat: the
buttocks resting on the heels. This is a position of rest for them.
For the average Westerner this position is painful.

I could not squat, partly because I had never done so before,
and to begin in my fifty-first year to try to squat, which in
volved stretching the sinews of my legs that had lost much
of their elasticity, was indeed painful. Add to this, the condi
tion of my ankles and legs. Fetters caused much pain to the
former while my legs were swollen due to the fetters. Balance
was made more difficult with my hands handcuffed behind
my back and holding my head erect to look at the face of the
cruel judge as I was ordered to do. I also wore old style Chinese
shoes which had no heels. If any one who has not acquired the
ability to squat from youth thinks this is a painless position,
I would advise him to try it at night, in his stocking feet, before
retiring. He should also hold his arms behind his back, so the
wrists touch, and hold his head erect.

I found this position painful and as time went on, it became
more painful. The judge shouted questions at me, pounding
the desk with his fist. The interpreter, a male in this session,
the recorder, and the guard joined in the tou cheng or shouting
accusation.

One night, around this time, I thought for certain I would
be literally torn to pieces, dismembered to death.

The cruel judge forced me to squat.

The Sepo guard held me from falling over, by pressing his
foot on my back with my hands handcuffed behind my back

Squatting

and my ankles fettered, so that I could hardly breathe. He
had pulled hands full of hair out of my head.

Shortly before this when I had refused to squat, the re
corder, to force me down into a squat, yanked my ear so that
blood streamed through my heavily grown beard. I thought
my ear was half torn off and I would be slowly and cruelly
killed by dismemberment.

Yet these violent tortures made me more stubborn. I re
fused to confess what they pressed me to confess. I was pre
pared to die rather than confess falsely.

14

A False Confession

THE JUDGE THEN ordered me to confess my spying activities
in the U. S. before coming to China. I maintained I had done
no spying in the U. S.

This went on for an hour or so, while I was squatting.

The pain was excruciating.

To gain at least a moment of relief, I fell back on the floor,
the dirty floor, stretching out my two legs.

What a relief to stretch out my legs for only a moment!
The guard, shouting at me to get up, seized me by my hair
and pulled me up,

I stood up. It was a relief to stand up. I was then forced
to squat again.

Questioning, shouting by the judge were resumed. After a
period of time, I again fell back, sprawling over the floor for
a moment's respite. The guard again seized me by the hair,
pulling me up to my feet, then forcing me down to a squatting
position. The questions continued.

This went on for some hours. I had literally wiped the con
crete floor. My clothes, already dirty from weeks of continued
wear, became more filthy from the dirt on the floor.

The guard, after a few falls of mine, held me in position
by putting his foot on my back and pressing down. This made
breathing very difficult.

After hours of this my head was in a whirl.

To relieve myself, I started to tell about my attendance at
open air meetings, and two hall meetings of the American

66

A False Confession

Students Union, a national "progressive" organization at the
University o Chicago, where I was a graduated student of
geology.

This interested the judge.

He then allowed me to stand up. It was now painful to
straighten my knees in order to stand erect, but it was such
a relief to stand!

I then went into details about my casual dropping in on
these three or four "progressive" student meetings and pick
ing up their hand bills.

This was collecting intelligence according to the judge!
Dropping in on meetings opened to all, and to which all
were invited was collecting intelligence!

"What did you do with this intelligence?" the judge asked.

"I told it to a friend of mine," I replied.

"He was a government agent, was he not?"

"No " I replied.

"He was!" the judge replied and insisted on it.

"He was not," I answered. "He knew an F.B.I, agent as a
friend but was not an agent himself."

"Ah! he knew an F.B.I, agent, and reported to the F.B.I,
the intelligence you collected."

"I know nothing about such."

"Can you deny it?"

"I know nothing about such," I repeated.

"Then he did transmit your intelligence to the F.B.I."

In this manner the session ended.

I returned to my cell, full of perspiration, with my clothes
dirtier than ever, and my hair all disheveled.

In the next session, I was submitted to the same torture of
squatting. The judge insisted that I was an American agent.

At last I thought, the judge and the Chinese government
know I am not an American agent, everybody knows this, but
the government wants to disgrace me. I am like an actor in a

67

F,our Years in a Red Hell

play, taking the part of Julius Caesar. All know I am not really
Julius Caesar, but in the play I say I am. Now, all know I am
not an American agent but I am pressed to say I am. It would
be no lie to say I am such because no one would be deceived.

"I will disgrace myself before the communists by confess
ing I am an F.B.I, agent. Then after my release, I will send
a denial of this from Hong Kong to the government in Peking.
If they publish my false confession, I will publish my denial/'
I thought.

With my mind full of such thoughts and my weakened
exhausted body reeking with the pain of fetters and hand
cuffs, I confessed falsely.

"I am an F.B.I, agent," I said.

I was immediately allowed to stand up, amidst the cats and
dogs I saw running around the court room. It was weakness
on my part to make such a false confession. I do not defend it.

When I returned to my cell, I felt thoroughly miserable.
Never had I experienced such a feeling of guilt, of confirmed
weakness. "I, a priest, a rector of the Fu Jen Catholic Univer
sity, making a false confession, and such a confession: that I
was a spy, an agent of the American government, an F.B.I,
man. I have disgraced myself, my religious community, Fu
Jen University, my Church! What will the Catholics of Fu
Jen now think of me? Will this scandalize them that they will
weaken in their faith? Heaven knows these good Chinese
Catholics need encouragement, a good example. I, who for
merly exhorted them to be steadfast, have fallen!"

The mental anguish, mental torture was great. Day and
night I reproached myself, but I hoped well-meaning people
outside would understand.

68

-

15

A Denial and a Retraction

MY FIRST repudiation of my false F.B.I, confession was made
shortly after the confession had been made.

No surcease or lessening of my tortures, which I had ex
pected, followed my false confession of being an F.B.I agent.
On the contrary they continued. The judge seemed more
vicious than ever. He told my chu chang that I had only begun
to confess and he intended to torture me throughout the com
ing night, from sunset to after sunrise, by making me squat
ten or twelve hours, unless I confessed fully as he wanted.

The forces of nature intervened, however. I had suffered
so much from the tortures so far inflicted that I found myself
sick, shaking with chills. The elderly Manchu physician
noticed this and reported it to the chu chang who sent me to
the prison physician. I told him how I felt. I added that I had
often had malaria during my six years in tropical Africa and
that I felt like I had another attack of this fever. He took my
temperature and gave me powders that served as a panacea
since he gave them for practically all ailments. This physician,
however, impressed me as a kind man the only openly kind
man in the prison although he appeared to me to be more
ready to lecture his patients to confess and reform than he
was to give them medical advice.

This kind physician, however, reported to the prison author
ities that I was a sick man and should be allowed a night's
rest.

I was given my first night's rest!

69

Four years in a Red Hell

When I was called to court again, the judge wanted to know
my number as an F.B.L agent. I was unprepared for this and
spent a hectic night denying I had a number. The next day I
decided I had to give a number and selected one that could
easily be remembered, otherwise I would be giving a different
one every day. So I decided on a number of four digits, the
first two of which were multiplied by two to equal the second
two as 3264 or 3162. 1 forget which one was used. I submitted
this as my F.B.I, number.

Then I was asked what letter preceded my number. I re
membered that my serial number in the army was preceded
by "O" to signify "officer/' So I said my F.B.L number was
preceded by "I" to signify "Inspector."

So the sad comedy went on. I had placed my head in the
noose, which was drawn tighter and tighter.

"When did you join the F.B.L?"

"Where did you join the F.B.L?"

"Who recommended you?"

"Who was your chief or superior officer?"

"What was your rank?"

"What identification did you have?"

These and more questions were hurled at me night after
night. Each came unexpected. Each was struggled with. Each
was eventually answered. I became more and more wretched.

The mental suffering became more and more intense.

Then one day, I resolved to straighten matters out, to re
pudiate my false confessions.

That night when my court session opened, I told the judge
I had a statement I wanted to make. He ordered me to make it.

"I am not an F.B.L agent. I never was an F.B.L agent. My
confession that I was one was false and I wish to correct it!"

Then the judge sat back and rather quietly in a rather
fatherly manner asked about my family, about each member,
taking one by one, inquiring about his or her name, occupa-

70

A Denial and a Retraction

tion, habit, when I last saw him or her, etc., centering my
mind on those I loved best. He was telling me in so many
words: "Have you forgotten your family? Don't you want to
see them again? The way you are going, you will never see
them you are simply leading yourself into a lot of torture
that will be terminated by your execution."

I stood this for the entire night, without retracting my de
nial or acknowledging my false confession.

But the next day prisoner Wang and prisoner Lu started
working on me. Prisoner Wang was a merchant who spoke
English. Prisoner Lu had been a colonel in the secret service
of the Chinese Nationalist Army. He had become very "pro
gressive" and communistic in his thinking. Both were in cells
different from mine but they were daily sent into my cell to
take over and direct the helping," that is, pressing, torturing,
and the tou chenging of me to force a confession out of me.

Lu was the chief. Wang was usually interpreter for Lu
who spoke little English but they often conferred about how
to treat me, or they would take turns working on me.

Now Wang took matters mostly into his own hands and
began to lecture me.

"Well, Rigney, how was the court session last night?" he
began in the usual fashion of a chu cheng, asking a prisoner
all about the previous court session, about which he had, in
this case, been thoroughly informed by the judge.

I told him I had denied my confession of being an F.B.I,
agent.

"What!" he shrieked.

"You denied your confession! My God! Rigney, what have
you done? I thought you had more sense than that! Here,
everything was going on so well! You had confessed well; you
were almost finished with your confession. A little more and
you would have been finished. You would then have been
allowed to sleep as you need to. You would then have been
allowed a hot bath. What is more, you would soon be deported.

71

Four Years in a Red Hell

The government does not want to try to re-educate you. You
are a foreigner and too old anyway for re-education. All the
government wants of you is a confession and then let you go.
But you have spoilt everything. You will never be deported
now. You will be shot in a few days. What is the good of such
fool-heartedness? Washington cannot help you. Wall Street
has long ago forgotten you. Do you think the U. S. government

will erect a monument to you? /' And so he went on and

on and on and on, hour after hour.

It was most unbearable. I had to listen with every mark
of attention. When I showed signs of fatigue, I was obliged
to stand up and kter kneel for more hours. This continued
all day.

As far as I can remember, my regular judge did not pre
side in my court session that night but the interpreter or
recorder took his place and questioned me about matters not
pertaining to my F.B.I, confession.

The next day Wang continued with his tongue lashing,
until after some hours I felt I oould stand it no longer. "The
time is not ripe for denying my false confession/ 7 1 thought.
So, truly weary and exhausted in mind and body, I said, "Yes,
I am an F.B.I. agent."

At this Wang and Lu were elated. They had won.

They advised me to report the acknowledgment of my
F.B.I, confession to the judge at the next night session. I had
at the last moment gotten some sense, they told me, and had
saved my life.

In the next court session, I told the judge that I had re
ceived some '"help" from my cell-mates and as a consequence
wanted to retract the denial of my F.B.L confession that I
acknowledged my confession I was an F.B.I, man.

He very graciously forgave me the great "crime" I had com
mitted. I would not be punished for such a "crime" but it
should not happen again. Another such mistake would be
fatal. He then spent the night giving me a long lecture on

72

A Denial and a Retraction

government policy and government leniency to prisoners who
confessed and reformed. He even granted me the privilege of
sitting down in the court session.

For the next few days, he dealt less harshly with me. It was
evident that he was straining himself to make the impression
of being "kind" to me. Perhaps he thought that the previous
cruel treatment had been carried too far and brought poor
results. A show of "kindness" might bring better results.

But I soon felt more wretched than ever. My mental agony
was worse than before. Here, a couple of weeks previously, I
had been ready to die for the truth. Since then, I had made
a false confession, retracted it, gone through a couple of days
and nights of acute struggle and suffering in resisting efforts
to force me to retract this denial, but had weakened again and
retracted it. I was back and deeper in the hole.

73

I n

16

Praying

, what are you doing?" shouted elm chang Lu one
morning in December 1951, as he saw me squatting and pray
ing, waiting to be allowed to file out to the open latrines.

"I am just squatting waiting for the officer to open the door
for us/' I replied.

Daily my judge subjected me to the torture of squatting.
Hours each day I suffered from this but began to notice that
squatting was becoming less painful. To harden myself, I
began to squat in my cell whenever I could.

On this particular morning my chu chang interpreted my
squatting as a position of prayer. Although I was praying, my
squatting position had nothing to do with my devotions.

"Rigney, do you ever pray?" Lu then asked.

"Yes, I pray."

There was silence.

I had answered Lu's question and was satisfied to let mat
ters stand.

Lu evidently made a mental note of my statement, since
he later reported to the prison officer that I prayed on many
occasions and even counted my prayers on my fingers. This
was true when I prayed my rosary, using my fingers to count
instead of beads.

"Rigney, are you praying?" roared chu chang Lu, on a cold,
bleak day in January 1952, as I sat motionless, excepting for
the slight movement of my lips in prayer which I thought
could not be noticed.

74

Praying

"Yes, I am praying. 1 "

"Praying! What are you praying for? You should be think
ing about your crimes/' bellowed this ex-army colonel and one
time anti-communist.

"God cannot help you/* he continued in his blasphemy,
"Only the 'people's' government can help you. You fool, you
are wasting your time with your silly prayers!

"Stop praying!

"Do not pray anymore!

"Think of the crimes you have committed against the
Chinese 'people'!"

But I continued to pray. Everyday, I prayed from three to
ten rosaries for my daily office and other intentions, and many
more prayers. Meditation became sweet as never before.

The wicked communists could deprive me of my liberty,
torture me and set their running dogs among my cell-mates
to join with them, in torturing me day after day for over four
years, but they could not abolish the Omnipresence of the
Most Blessed Trinity. They could not prevent me from turn
ing my mind and raising my heart above the foulness of their
world, to Divine Realities.

"Do you ever pray, Rigney?" asked the officer one day in the
spring of 1953.

"Yes."

"Pu hsing! Pu hsing! (That is not allowed! That is not al
lowed!)" this huge, brutal type of a communist prison official
said, his face distorted with anger.

"How often do you pray?" he continued.

"I pray every day."

"Pu hsing! pu hsing!" he shouted as he shook his fist in my
face, and lectured me that it was forbidden to pray, at any
time, even while in bed, before sleeping or on awakening in
the morning.

And so this official of a regime, the communist regime of

75

Four Years in a Red Hell

China which asserts that religions are free, that the Church
has no ground to complain, went on curtain lecturing me,
threatening me, forbidding me to pray.

On the same day, after the official had left the cell, prisoner
Julian, a "Catholic" Eurasian of foreign nationality, took up
the theine where the officer had left off, and attempted to
persuade me to stop praying.

I had been arrested under the fictitious charge of being a
spy. Now, I thought, if the communist government punishes
me, by shooting me, or sentencing me to a prison term because
I prayed, they would be clarifying my case, removing the
smoke screen of hypocrisy they had emitted around it. They
would make my case an undoubtedly religious case.

So, I stood my ground.

Julian, I knew, had been delegated to "help" me, to watch
my every move, to listen to my every word, and report all to
the government. He spoke English well and was allowed to
talk to me in that language.

"Why do you pray, Rigney?" Julian said.

"I pray because I am obliged to pray."

Julian then embarked on an effort to convince me to give
up praying!

However, this young opportunist of little character and less
principle, met with no success.

I refused to repudiate my habit of prayer.

To the last day, in prison, I prayed and meditated. I often
pitied my pagan, non-Christian cell-mates who did not find
the consolation I did, in prayer.

In the fall of 1953, Han, an English-speaking Chinese had
been appointed by the prison authorities to "help" me. He was
allowed to talk to me in English.

Han watched me so closely that one night he noticed my
lips moving as if in prayer. The next morning he asked me to

76

Praying

explain why my lips were moving the previous night while
I slept.

The explanation seemed simple to me, but I preferred to
keep it to myself. I usually went to sleep praying. Conse
quently, it should not surprise one if my lips continued to
move in sleep.

"A sleeping man is not responsible for his actions," I told
Han.

After this, Han often told me that on the previous night
he had noticed my lips moving, while I slept, as if I were
praying.

On Christmas day, 1953, Han told me he had gotten up
many many times during the night to see if my lips were
moving as in prayer. He also wanted to know if I had arisen
during the night to perform some secret religious Christmas
rite.

Often, when I counted something as the days on my fingers,
the chu chang at the time or some activist assigned to "help"
would ask me if I were counting prayers on my fingers.

How I longed to celebrate the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass!

How I longed to pray my divine office!

How I longed to receive the Holy Eucharist!

How I longed to visit and pray before the Blessed Sacra
ment!

All these were denied me for the four years and two months,
or to be more exact, for the one thousand five hundred and
nine days I was in the communist prisons of Peking, China.

Often I dreamed of celebrating the Holy Sacrifice of the
Mass, usually in the University chapel of the Divine Word
or in the immaculately clean and beautifully decorated chapel
of those good Sisters of Fu Jen, the Holy Ghost Missionary
Sisters.

Those were happy dreams. They came to an abrupt and

77

Four Years in a Red Hell

painful end when I awoke to find where I was: in prison, a
communist prison, modeled after hell.

In the winter of 1953, prisoner Luke, the foreign physician
and a Catholic, fell into a short conversation with me on
church architecture, at a time when we were alone in the
cell. Luke was a gifted, versatile man with ideas about church
architecture for China that pleased me. He drew a rough
ground plan of a church in the form of a Latin cross.

Some days later, chu chang Tito saw this drawing. On learn
ing from Luke that it had been sketched for me, he shouted,
"Rigney asked you to do this? Look, that is done in the shape
of a cross! He asked you to do this, Luke, you stupid ass, to
fool you! He is using religion to gain your sympathy, to keep
you from reforming!" Turning to me he roared, "Rigney, you
will answer for this crime, in due time!"

Lan Tzu is like hell," I often thought.

In Ts'ao Lan Tzu, no one was allowed to pray.

No one was allowed to conduct or lead Church services.

No one was allowed or given the opportunity to attend
Church services.

No one was allowed to administer the sacraments.

No one was allowed to receive the sacraments.

No one was allowed to think of God.

No one was allowed to talk about any subject even remotely
connected with religion.

It was strictly forbidden to be friendly with any one. It
was forbidden to show sympathy to a prisoner suffering of
handcuffs or fetters.

It was not only allowed but even encouraged to hate other
prisoners.

It was allowed and encouraged to persecute, torture other
prisoners.

Praying

Prisoners were subjected to various kinds of physical and
mental tortures.

"Hell is like this!" I thought.

But the one consolation was that Ts'ao Lan Tzu would not
last forever. It would come to an end some day. I would be
shot, die in prison from a disease or torture, or I would be
released. The end would eventually come. It might take a
long time coming, but it would come.

Hell on the other hand is eternal, endless.

I J^rned one big lesson, in Ts'ao Lan Tzu I must save my
soul.

I knew this necessity before, but here it was brought home
to me as never before.

The hell of the temporal Ts'ao Lan Tzu is bad enough!
With God's help, I will avoid the eternal Ts'ao Lan Tzu the
eternal hell!

In this hell of Ts'ao Lan Tzu, no one laughed a real, hearty
laugh. Some prisoners indulged in mock laughter; derision
over another prisoner's mistakes; forced expressions of false
delight in reported communist victories, etc., but no one ever
really, truly laughed.

Before my arrest, I was quite gay. I had a sense of humor
and was quick to joke and laugh. I was such even during the
20 months when the clouds of my impending arrest hung
over me.

But now in communist prisons, I never laughed. I never was
gay or merry.

I felt that I had changed, lost something, that I could never
be my old self again.

It seemed I was damaged mentally, psychologically
wounded, and the spiritual scars of these wounds of my mental
suffering of four years and two months would forever remain.

79

-

17

More Denials and the Cold

I HAD GONE through the anguish of denying my false con
fession and had lost this regained ground by retraction of my
denial. I was worse off than before.

It is difficult to remember the sequences of events of the
early days of my imprisonment. But I recall that a few days
after my retraction of my first denial of my false confession, I
found myself in great mental anguish. Finally I decided to
deny my false confession by a written statement. Wang and
Lu exploded in anger when I told them I wanted paper on
which to write this denial. Lu soon arranged with the guard
to allow Trim to leave the cell, evidently to report my plans to
the prison authorities.

On Lu's return to the cell, he and Wang warned me that
to sign a written denial of my confession would result in my
execution.

"The government has evidence that you are an F.B.I. man.
If you admit this, you would help yourself. If you deny it by
a written statement, you will be shot in a few days," Wang
said.

I struggled with myself: "The government claims they have
evidence that I am an F.B.I, agent. The awful aspect of this
is that the government alone, whom I do not trust, will judge
the validity of this evidence. I will have nothing to say about
it. I will not be informed of it. I will never be allowed to refute
it. I will never be allowed a competent, reliable counsel to

80

More Denials and the Cold

defend me when this evidence shall be reviewed. The evidence
must be some flimsy piece of a distorted, exaggerated account
of me. If I sign a written denial, I will surely be shot in a few
days. But better be shot than live in a falsehood. God knows the
truth, that I am not an F.B.I, agent. If I am shot, the com
munists will shoot me under the false charges of being an
American spy, who had his just desert meted out to him., but
the Good God will know I am innocent and am dying for the
truth."

Wang lectured me all day.

In the kte afternoon, I wrote out my denial. Wang and Lu
were upset and advised me to think the matter o^ier before
signing the statement. I delayed signing about an hour, then
signed and handed it in.

I was certain I would be shot in a few days. I remember I
tore a sheet of shou chih ( a low grade of paper such as I have
never seen in the U. S. ) into about 48 pieces, each about 21/2
inches by sVi, for toilet use. As I was tearing up this paper, I
thought, "Why prepare so many pieces of shou chih; I will
be shot in three or four days."

On the following day, Wang and Lu began lecturing me
again. They told me I had made a big mistake, etc. This went
on for how long I do not remember, until I could stand it no
longer and I retracted. Again I was thrown into deep dejec
tion and anguish.

So I denied my false confession and retracted ray denial
some five times. Each time after the denial, I was subjected
to a long tongue-lashing from Wang until I couH stand it
no longer and decided the time was not ripe for my denial
and retracted.

Around the end of August, the judge demanded that I con
fess my connections with German Nazi espionage agencies.
I told him I had no such connections and knew nothing about
any German Nazi espionage group. He shouted, pounded his

81

Four Years in a Red Hell

desk, called me a liar, a guttersnipe threatened to shoot
me, etc.

He made me squat for hours. Once he stopped questioning
me, leaving me in the agony of squatting. After a half hour
or so, he looked up from the work on his desk that had en
gaged his attention and sneered saying, "Now pray to Mary.
See if she can help you!"

As a matter of fact, I had been praying for strength to bear
up under my ordeal. After this blasphemy, I prayed God to
note his mockery against His Mother, to confound this blas
phemer, and by showing His power in His own way, de
liver me.

In the middle or late part of September, my night and
early morning court session ceased. What a relief! How grand
it was to sleep the entire night through. Each morning, on
awakening, I fervently thanked the Holy Triune God for
the night's rest I had just enjoyed.

"I am cold," I said as I shuddered in the evenings of late
September, but no relief was offered me until sometime in
October when a light cotton Japanese Army summer jacket
was given me.

This was a relief for a week or so. It grew chillier in October
and I suffered from the cold. I asked for a second jacket. Lu
brought one in and told me I could have it as soon as I cleared
up my confession.

Day after day, he came into my cell, carrying this extra
jacket, keeping it in my view, while I shuddered from the
cold, and offered it to me if I would clear up my confession.
* I suffered much from the cold. There was no heat. The
window was kept open. Cold was now added to hunger, the
pains of fetters, the mental anguish of living a falsehood, and
the other ordinary inconveniences of a wretched, damp, rat-
infested cell.

More Denials and the Cold

At last I was given a mien au or cotton padded jacket. For
a week or so this was enough, except for my feet that never
were warm until at night I wrapped myself in the mien pel
or cotton blanket which the prison had issued to me in late
October. It was badly in need of washing since it gave off
an unpleasant odor of the feet of the one or more prisoners
who had previously used it.

Soon the mien au was insufficient to keep me warm. I sat
all day on the wooden kang, shivering, my breath steamed
in the cold. My feet soon were covered with 18 or 20 cold
sores. I had only summer pants on. I was then wearing the
heaviest fetters, weighing almost twenty pounds. When I
wrapped myself in the smelly mien pei or cotton blanket, my
feet on getting warm pained me for half an hour or so.

Sometime in 1950, 1 was asked by a reliable and good friend
if I had a way of relaying a message from Chairman Mao Tsa-
tung to President Truman.

This question shocked me. Had my friend unknowingly
been led to ask me a trap question? I had never had at my
disposal or employed other than ordinary legitimate means
of communication or correspondence: the mail, telegraph,
cable or telephone.

"I have no special means of communication/' I said. "The
only means I have are the ordinary ones as the mail, telegraph,
cable and telephone.

"If President Mao wants me to deliver a message for him
to President Truman, I could only use these ordinary, legiti
mate means. I could take a message, but in that case Chair
man Mao Tse-tung would have to provide me with the exit
permit to leave China, which I have been waiting months
for, and give me his message personally. I would then deliver
this to President Truman, in person."

The other person continued: "Mao Tse-tung would like to
form a coalition government with Fu Tso-I and Chiang Kai-

83

Four Years in a Red Hell

Shek that would be pro-American rather than pro-Russian.
He would like to inform President Truman of this, in a way
the pro-Russian section of the Chinese Communist Party
would be unable to learn about/'

This seemed rather unusual. I certainly did not want to be
involved in sectional strifes within the party, if the matter
were true.

I was approached again with the same request which I
answered in the same way.

At least five others knew the contents of this request and
that it had been made to me.

Later, three of these five were in Ts'ao Lan Tzu prison
with me. None of them wore chains, as stubborn prisoners,
and I was told two were so far advanced in their re-education
that they were removed to the reformatory where special
privileges were enjoyed. These three had evidently confessed
well, including about this Mao-Fu-Chiang coalition and the
Mao-Truman message.

For a long time I refused to mention anything about this
message and the part I had been requested to play in deliver
ing it

At last, I concluded the government must know all about
it from these fellow prisoners or from others not in Ts'ao Lan
Tzu and I was only asking for torture, trying to hide what
the government knew.

So one day in the Autumn of 1952, 1 told the judge about
the matter of the proposed coalition, as well as the message
and the stand I had taken.

The next day, to my astonishment and relief, the judge
brought up the matter and said: "This is all pure rubbish!
Forget all about it! Do not mention it again!"

Yes, linking Mao Tse-tung with Chiang Kai-Shek and Pres
ident Truman was not to be heard of and the matter was not
to be touched.

The alternative could be that the original question with

More Denials and the Cold

its explanation about a coalition, pro- American government
was a bait, a test to discover whether I employed illegitimate
means of communications as a secret radio, or was promoting
the formation of a new pro-American government in China.

18

Handcuffs and Fetters

THE FETTERS I wore cut deep into my ankles. My leather
lowcut shoes were ruined by then. For a day or so I pro
tected my ankles by wrapping my pants around my ankles
under the fetters. These pants were strong U. S. army pants,
which I had worn in the army during the Second World War.
The fetters cut through this tough cloth, stained with my
blood. When the judge saw this protection of my ankles, he
ordered me to remove my pants from beneath the fetters
and keep them removed. My bare ankles must not be pro
tected from the rusty, rough, dirty, iron fetters.

My feet and legs swelled up. My feet swelled so much it
was impossible to put on my shoes. There was a discarded
pair of old worn-out Chinese cloth shoes in the cell. The chu
chang gave me these to wear but they soon fell to pieces, and
I went to court in my bare feet.

My arms and hands swelled up from the handcuffs.

These fetters and handcuffs became painful.

From them I learned the meaning of "wretchedness."

Seven times I was handcuffed with my hands behind my
back for times ranging from one day to seven days and nights.
The first time was a few days after my arrest. I forget the
reason the judge gave when he ordered them on.

I ask the reader to use his or her imagination, in judging
and understanding the torture of having your hands hand
cuffed behind your back. Aside from the pain of the rough,

86

Handcuffs and Fetters

dirty, rusty iron cutting into your skin and flesh, every time
you move your hand, there are other sufferings: humiliations,
insults you undergo too delicate to write or talk about. This
is especially regarding acts associated with urination and
bowel movements.

You cannot bathe yourself. You cannot wash your face. You
cannot comb your hair if you have long hair. You cannot
scratch yourself when the lice bite.

If you wear spectacles, who cleans them of the sweat, dust,
and grease that collects on them?

It is most difficult to sleep, on the hard wooden kang. You
lie on one arm. This is painful. Every position you take, lying
down, is painful.

How can you eat?

The first time I was handcuffed, the chu chang ordered a
cell-mate to feed me. Later I had to eat unaided the best I
could, like a dog. My wo tou was thrown on the kang with
curses, then placed above the stinking urine bucket by Lu,
the chu chang, and I was obliged to kneel at the side of the
kang, over this stinking urine bucket which was under the
kang, and eat my wretched wo tou, like a dog.

Creatures, cell-mates who claimed to be human beings,
subjected me to these indignities. Chu chang Lu, the ex-
Kuomintang colonel, was the leader in all this, in his efforts to
carry out the orders of his new communist masters who also
claimed to be human beings but perhaps I am wrong, mis
judging the Chinese communists. There are no human beings
according to marxist communists. A human being is a spiritual
animal, but marxist communists deny spirituality to men.
Therefore, they deny that we are human. We are only two-
legged, upright walking brutes.

We do not have souls.

We do not have spirituality.

We are not human!

The idea of being "human'* is just so nmch bourgeois, im-

87

Four 'Years in a Red Hell

perialistic, religious rubbish, according to the prophet Karl
Marx.

The last time I was handcuffed was in punishment for re
fusing to accuse Father Joseph Meiners, S.V.D., and Professor
Dr. William Bruell, of being Gestapos. The former had been
on the staff of Fu Jen University and had manifested much
zeal in developing the Legion of Mary at Fu Jen. The latter
was an efficient teacher of chemistry, who had remained at
his post as head of the Department of Chemistry of Fu Jen
University, until the communists forced him out. When the
judge accused Father Meiners to me of being a member of
the Gestapo and asked me what evidence I knew to substanti
ate this, I said, "I know of no fact to indicate or prove that
Father Joseph Meiners is a Gestapo, and personally I do not
believe he is one."

At this, the judge blew up into a rage of fury, shouting,
pounding his desk, cursing me, calling me a liar and the like.

I held my ground, in spite of all the abuse dealt out to me.

Then the judge accused Professor Bruell the same as he had
Father Meiners, and I replied in a similar manner.

Again the judge fell into a tantrum.

This went on over Father Meiners and Professor Bruell for
some 3 or 4 hours throughout the morning session.

I was then handcuffed with my hands behind my back.

The heaviest fetters had already been placed on me. These
weighed around twenty pounds.

It was so difficult to try to sleep lying down that I sat up.

The nights were cold and my blanket was wrapped around
me but every night it soon unloosened, and I became very
cold.

For seven days and nights, I wore these handcuffs. My
wrists and arms were very much swollen.

When these handcuffs were removed, as usual it was very
painful to bring my arms around to their normal position,
or in front of me. Especially it was difficult to lift them up. It

88

Handcuffs and Fetters

took two or three days of practice to lift them above my head.

For several months my wrists were numb.
* Men, prelates, priests, brothers and women yes, nuns, the
most sensitive of creatures, underwent these unspeakable in
dignities!

Then there were the fetters.

The pain of these instruments of torture became more in
tense day by day. Each step was agony as the horrible, heavy,
rough iron ground back and forth into my flesh.

I would have preferred being shot to walking fifty feet in
fetters.

And the sadistic judge called me back and forth, three,
four or five times a day to his hellish court which was about
300 feet away.

I got blood poison from these filthy fetters and would have
died, but the communists wanted me to live. I was of more
value to them alive than dead. A living prisoner can confess.
A dead one cannot.

So my fetters were removed this time and some two dozen
penicillin injections or what was told me was penicillin were
administered to me.

It is easy for the communists to kill a prisoner without the
formality of shooting him. Fetters, exposure to cold, starvation,
are some of the means at their disposal to do away with
prisoners.

I remember one night while slowly making my way to the
court in the excruciating pain of these fetters, with a cruel
Sepo guard at my rear, cursing and shouting at me to move
faster. In utter abandonment I prayed the only prayer I could
think of and utter: the words of Our Blessed Lord on the cross,
words I began to understand for the first time! "My God, My
God, why hast Thou forsaken me?" Matthew, XXVII, 46.

19-

Divine Word Missionaries,
Food and Clothing

"WHO were the F.B.I, spies in the Divine Word Society
in the U.S.A.?" asked the judge in a court session, one day in
November.

I loved the Divine Word Mission Society to which I belong,
but I never realized how much I loved it until the communists
calumniated it, accused it of being a spying organization.

The Divine Word Mission Society, a spying organization?
Outrageous!

The court asked me to write the history of the Divine Word
Mission Society. I did this, describing how a pious, German
priest, the Venerable Father Arnold Janssen founded this
society in 1875, to train foreign missionaries and conduct
foreign missions. The court was very angry because I did
not write that Father Arnold Janssen was a spy who founded
a big espionage organization which he called the Divine Word
Society. The judge also claimed that St. Mary's Mission Sem
inary, Techny, Illinois, U.S.A., was a spy training center.

St. Mary's Mission Seminary, a spy training center? Out
rageous! I had studied there eleven of the fourteen years I
spent preparing for the priesthood and loved this beautiful
spot very much. I had been ordained a priest there. Now the
communists maintained that it was a training center for spies!

Such utter rubbish!

Divine Word Missionaries, Food and Clothing

The court, however, continued pressing me to confess what
members of the American Provinces of the Divine Word Mis
sionaries were F.B.I, agents. Then one night after retiring
time, when all the cell-mates were in bed, Lu was called out
of the cell. I had been transferred to Lu's cell, where he was
chu chang. Wang was also in this cell.

In a few minutes Lu returned and ordered Wang and me
to get up. He then told me through Wang as interpreter that
he had just been called out by my judge who had instructed
him to press me to name the American Divine Word Mis
sionaries who were F.B.I, men. The judge further stated that
there would be no sleep for any one in my cell this or the
following nights until I confessed.

So there I was, sitting up shivering in the cold of a Novem
ber's night in Peking, keeping the rest of my cell-mates awake.

I told Wang and Lu that I knew of no American Divine
Word Missionary who was an F.B.I agent. They insisted that
there were many. We carried on like this for one or two hours.
Then, I considered, for me to keep all my cell-mates awake
night after night was no small matter. So I said I knew some
American Divine Word Missionaries who were F.B.I, men
and after about an hour, listed some members of the Divine
Word Missionaries outside of China, out of range of the
Chinese communists.

With this we were all allowed to sleep.

Furthermore, my fetters were removed and I was allowed
my first hot bath in four months.

What a relief it was to have those heavy fetters removed!
My ankles were sore and full of wounds from these and
especially from the first pair of medium sized fetters that had
cut into my skin and flesh. It was three months before my
ankles healed, because walking kept the wounds open. The
bath was another great relief for which I had longed, for many
months.

Four Years in a Red Hell

Our cell and another cell were led to the bath house. We
entered a room about 10 feet by 12 feet where we undressed,
piling our clothes on the floor. Each prisoner laid his clothes
together, hoping to recover them with little trouble. We then
passed into the bath room which was about 20 feet square
with two pools each about 8 feet square. Each pool was filled
with hot water that had been often used by the cadres and
guards of the prison as well as by prisoners of other cells.

We sat in the hot water, then rubbed ourselves with a wet
towel. It was forbidden to use soap in the pool and there was
no time for every one to soap and rinse outside the pool.
Hence, most were satisfied with a soaking and rubbing with
hot water alone.

Following this we hastened into the room where our clothes
were and as quickly as possible found our clothes, dressed and
stood in line outside the bath house to be led back to the cell
where most prisoners loudly praised the "good" government
for providing an excellent hot bath for us "criminals, enemies
of the people."

Such adulation was nauseating to me. It was indulged in
on all possible occasions by most prisoners.

I remember one chap in this same cell, a certain Wu, who
went one better than the rest in his servile flattery of the gov
ernment that had ruthlessly thrown him and millions of others
into prison. Every morning on hearing the signal to rise, he
would immediately, before getting out of his bed-roll, break
out singing a communist song as loudly as he could to draw
the attention of guards and officers.

I felt refreshed after this hot bath.

Moreover, I was issued and allowed to put on mien ku or
cotton padded pants. I was quite warm now with cotton
padded jacket and pants.

But by the end of November, these were not enough to keep
me warm. I shivered in the unheated, damp cells from the
lack of underwear, heavy winter underwear.

Around the beginning of December, the court allowed me

Divine Word Missionaries, Food and Clothing

to buy food after my writing a request for it, I purchased
about 16 U.S. dollars worth of food, including meat, apples,
eggs, butter (I ordered one pound of butter but was given
oleomargarine for which I paid about two U.S. dollars), pea
nuts, etc. This food with its proteins and fats was greatly
needed by me and equally relished.

The court, however, was quite dramatic in delivering it.
The judge called me to court, and showed me this food. My
eyes almost popped out of their sockets. The food looked so
good.

I thanked the judge for it.

Wang went into an ecstasy in his praise of the government.
He said he almost cried. He was so moved when the com
munist government allowed me, an imperialist spy, a great
enemy of the Chinese people, to purchase this food. He could
not understand how I could be so cold and unmoved after
having committed such "crimes" against the "people."

As the days passed, I suffered more and more from the cold.
The court staged Act II in trying to win me by "generosity." In
the middle of December, the judge informed me that the court
would send soldiers to my living quarters at Fu Jen to gather
some of my warm clothing and bedding. I was to request these
and submit a list of what I wanted, which I did.

Then on Christmas eve, I was called to court where I saw
my clothes and bedding in the court room. The judge then
wished me a Merry Christmas and released these belongings
to me. I thanked him for them but felt that he was unneces
sarily dramatic about the whole matter.

Among the clothes I received was a suit of woolen under
wear, and a woolen shirt-, which I immediately put on. I was
then warm. In the early part of January, stoves were set up
in the corridors and fires started in them. These, with the
heavy clothing, kept me warm for the rest of the winter of
1952.

93

Four 'Years in a Red Hell

The fifth denial of my false F.B.I. confession and retraction
of this denial occurred, as far as I can remember, in January
1952. The judge was very angry.

"I forbid you to deny this confession again," he said. "If
you dare to deny it again, you shall be shot. This is definite!
Do you understand?"

"Yes."

Then after about an hour of shouting and cursing me, all the
while pounding on the desk like a maniac, he shouted, order
ing me to write and sign a statement that I would never again
deny my F.B.I, confession and if I did, I would submit to the
severest punishment, which meant execution.

I hesitated to do such, that is, to bind myself never to tell
the truth about fh.is false confession, never, even under pain
of execution.

With my hesitation, the judge grew frantic. The interpreter
and recorder joined in shouting at me and demanding this
signed statement. True to form the armed guard took his cue
from the enraged judge, and joined in the shouting. As I still
hesitated, he arose from his seat, took his big pistol by the
barrel, raising it high in the air in a gesture of striking, and
stepped forward to beat me over the head with the butt or
handle of this weapon.

In the midst of this madhouse, I thought, "The time will
inevitably come when I will make a final and definite denial
of this false confession. The court will then be angry with me
for having made a false confession. If I sign the statement
these court officials are now demanding, I will have a written
document to stand as an excuse for my failure for correcting,
at an earlier date, this false confession. Therefore I will write
and sign the demanded statement. There can be no doubt that
it is extorted from me under pressure, and consequently the
court can have no complaint against me, for delaying to cor
rect this false conf ession/*

"I will write and sign such a statement/' I said.

94

Divine Word Missionaries, Food and Clothing

The judge then dictated the statement which was to stand
as my own free statement, and I signed it.

I was then in the position of being forbidden to tell the truth,
forbidden by a communist military court, and had even
promised under pain of death not to tell the truth.

In the days and weeks that followed, my mental anguish
over this was great, until I resolved at all costs, even life itself,
to disregard this written pledge and to repudiate my false
confession.

95

20

Moving to the South Compound

*Tou PAO hao ni men ti tung hsi, (All of you pack up your
belongings)" the officer said, on January 11, 1952, then closed
the cell door.

In a moment the cell was in a state of apparent confusion.
Every one was busy throwing together his meager belongings
his bed-roll, bundle of change of clothing used as a pillow,
drinking cup, tooth brush, wash pan, soap, towel, pencil, shou
chih (toilet paper), salt, chop sticks, bowl and other non
descript items as note books, string on which to hang towels,
cell-made playing cards. Not every cell-mate possessed all
the above. A newly arrested prisoner or one denied the privi
lege to write his family, usually had only a bowl and chop
sticks.

After a few minutes, the officer returned and called out my
name, then the name of another cell-mate, who said he had
been a communist and had left the party around 1945, after
having belonged to it for 15 years. We were then led across
the compound to the southern section, and to cell No. 5.

This cell was an improvement over the three cells I had
previously occupied, in the northern section. The others had
the bare ground as the floor, and were rat infested. The new
cell, however, had a concrete floor. The rest of the cell was
the same as the others I had been in.

I spent about fourteen weeks in this and a nearby cell, in
both of which Lang was chu chang. They were a bitter four
teen weeks that ended around May i, 1952.

96

Moving to the South Compound

One cell-mate, a Japanese, spoke very little English, about
as much English as I did Chinese. The rest knew no English,

On the very first day in this cell, I was ordered to join the
rest of the cell mates as they gathered, sitting in a circle with
their legs crossed. Then the study class, a period of indoctrina
tion or brain-washing, began. A newspaper article was read.
A review and discussion of it followed.

When it came my turn to talk or recite, I said:

"Wo pu chih tao Chung Kuo-hua. Wo pu ming pei pao. (I
do not understand Chinese. I do not understand the news
paper.)"

After questioning me a little further, Lang left me alone.

My inability to speak and understand Chinese well was
an asset, as far as the study or brainwashing classes were
concerned. It spared me from joining in many discussions in
which the Catholic Church or the U.S.A., both of which I
loved very much, were grossly misrepresented, calumniated
and soundly cursed.

This ineptness in Chinese, on the other hand, was a great
drawback for me outside these classes, as in ordinary daily
intercourse with cell-mates, including the free time when con
versation was allowed. The conversation was limited in scope.
We were often told it should be confined to the field of the
"people's" China, socialism, communism, marxism, and the
like. The manifestation of friendliness, the discussion of ques
tions about one's past life, or former occupied cells or former
cell-mates, and of course religion and religious topics, were
all taboo.

But in spite of the restricted nature of the conversation,
the mere exchange of ideas was a relief.

I was isolated, ordered to sit in a corner, in and out of class.
The mental relief of conversation was denied me. This was
another torture to which I was subjected.

It was not a severe one in itself. Most of the tortures I suf
fered were not severe, but the accumulation of these rather

97

Four 'Years in a Red Hell

mild tortures over a long space of time constituted severe
tortures.

In this time, I frequently stated my desire to learn to speak
and write Chinese.

It was evident that the communist authorities did not want
me to learn Chinese. I repeatedly asked for a suitable book
in English for the study of this language. There were many
such books. And I had a good one in my room for which I asked
when the court sent soldiers to my living quarters to pick up
clothing, bedding and the like for me. But this Chinese book
was not brought me. I asked to purchase such a book, with
no results. I was never told I could not have such a book.
The desire was allowed to live on, but its satisfaction was
steadfastly denied me. The communists are experts in tortur
ing you, by allowing you to crave for something but denying
you satisfaction. How often did I experience this! The more
one begs for something, the less likely he will ever get it.
The result of this application of animal psychology is that
you just cease desiring anything. After all, poverty, low
standards of living are quite common in communist China,
in spite of all the boasting of great increases in real wages,
great raising of living standards, as never before! Hence, the
Chinese must be trained, I will not say taught, to desire little
or nothing.

Besides refusing me then and to the end of my imprison
ment, a suitable book from which to study Chinese, cell-mates
in cell 5 were forbidden to explain even in Chinese the mean
ing of words that I heard in the classes or in ordinary conversa
tion.

A year later, in February 1954, 1 was allowed to buy a small
book about 3 inches by 5 inches in which were some 2370
characters with phonetics alongside them. There were no
meanings in English. This book was useful to one who spoke
Chinese and wanted to learn characters.

In my case it was a mockery. I felt I was being tantalized.

98

Moving to the South Compound

Anyway I did study Chinese with this book, learning 1500
characters practically all of which I soon forgot when I was
unable to continue to study by reason of being ordered to sit
in on the classes and other indoctrination nonsense.

99

21

Priests Forever

IN THE winter of 1952, in cell 6 of the North or B Compound,
I discovered that one of the Chinese cell-mates, prisoner Lee,
was a Catholic priest. Lee and I were allowed to converse
together a little in Latin. However, by agreement, we spoke
together only when necessary or in urgent cases. We followed
this policy for our own protection. Since we were both priests,
talking together often and over long periods would only invite
punishment. Father Lee, however, often interpreted for me
in the cell, using Latin.

I wanted to receive the sacrament of penance, to go to con
fession. I had not made a confession since July 1951. No re
ligious ministrations were allowed in this prison. So I bided
my time, waiting for an opportunity when unobserved I could
confess.

After about two weeks my opportunity came. It was a Sun
day afternoon. Four cell-mates were playing cards with a
homemade set of cards. Father Lee and I were sitting close
together watching the game. I opened by talking to Father
Lee in Latin about card playing. I did this so if afterwards any
one should ask what we had been talking about, we could
say we had spoken about the card game.

Then I asked Father Lee if he would hear my confession,
since I had not confessed for seven months.

Father Lee said he would. I then made a short confession
and the pious priest folded his hands as in the confessional

100

Priests Forever

box, closed his eyes in prayer, and quite openly made a sign
of the cross as he absolved me. Anyone watching us would
have certainly seen we were up to something religious, some
thing unsocialistic, uncommunistic.

I was greatly relieved and thanked this good priest. God
bless him!

With the confession over Father Lee said, "Be careful, the
fu chu chang (assistant chu chang) is watching us."

This was no sooner said than the fu chu chang shouted at
us, demanding to know what we were talking about. Father
Lee said that we had been talking about the card game which
was true. I had first spoken about the game in preparation
for just such a question.

A few days later Father Lee was moved from my cell. I
missed him very much. The very presence of a fellow priest
was a consolation, even if I hardly ever spoke with him.

A few weeks after this, in the end of the Lenten season,
Father Yuan was suddenly brought into our cell. We immedi
ately recognized one another but gave no indication of this.

Father Yuan was ordered, for some reason or other, to leave
his cell and join our study classes on this one particular day.
He sat near me as I sat near the wall on the edge of the kang, in
isolation.

The hour passed, then came our second or last meal of the
day around 4:30 P.M. After this we filed out to the latrine.

We went to the latrine twice a day. The first time was about
an hour after rising. Outside the cell as we filed along, keeping
silent, we were supposed to keep our heads down, with eyes
directed to the ground, observing no one else. I kept my eyes
down when in view of the Sepo guards, otherwise I took in all
the other prisoners I could, to see who were in prison with me,
who were in fetters or handcuffs, etc.

On this particular day, some prisoners asked and received
permission to collect their clothes which they had hung up

101

Four Years in a Red Hell

in the morning to dry. Hie others, excepting Father Yuan and
me, were detained for some reason or other. Consequently
Father Yuan and I returned to our cell.

No sooner were we in the cell than Father Yuan whispered
to me in Latin, "Let us give one another conditional absolu
tion. This will stand for our Easter sacrament of penance."

I agreed.

Conditional absolution is given in cases of emergency when
a penitent is unable to confess, such as when a large number
of soldiers are about to go to battle, in an accident, etc.

Soon the class period opened. I again sat just behind
Father Yuan. After about half an hour, I gave him a gentle
poke in the back, as I signaled I was about to give him absolu
tion. I noticed the head of the good, pious Chinese priest bend
slightly lower and I absolved him. Then I waited and noticed
he turned a little towards me, with his right hand hidden
under his left arm. I then prayed an act of contrition as he
gave me absolution making a sign of the cross with his hidden
right hand. So Father Yuan and I received our Easter sacra
ment of penance in 1952.

About this time I noticed on a few occasions a foreigner
among the prisoners. He was of middle age. "He must be a
priest/* I thought. There was that indefinable characteristic
about him that is common in a priest. So one day as I came
on him, squatting in the open latrine, I raised my hand and
made a little sign of the cross as I gave him absolution. In a
moment's time I noticed his hand go up as he made a little sign
of the cross, and his lips uttered an absolution for me.

In Ts'ao Lan Tzu and the work prison where I was from
September 21, 1954 to July 13, 1955, 1 gave absolution daily
to all the disposed Catholics, and my blessing to all the rest of
the prisoners as we gathered, hundreds together, to go to the
latrine, or at general assemblies when 4,000 or 5,000 prisoners

102

Priests Forever

gathered together. I also did the same to my cell-mates at
night on retiring.

So I could multiply accounts of such priestly doings.

God bless those stouthearted priests, Chinese and foreign,
and there were many of them, as well as brothers, sisters and
Catholic laymen in Ts'ao Lan Tzu and Tzu Hsing Lu prisons,
most of whom were thrown into prison for no other reason
than that they promoted the Legion of Mary, opposed the
separation of the Church from the Bishop of Rome, the Pope,
and the like, while they were charged with outrageous, exag
gerated crimes.

As I saw these priests, brothers, sisters and Catholic lay
men, many in chains, I often thought of the words of Our
Blessed Lord:

"Blessed are they who suffer persecution for justice 7 sake,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

"Blessed are you when men reproach you, and persecute
you, and, speaking falsely, say all manner of evil against you,
for my sake. Rejoice and exult, because your reward is great
in heaven; for so did they persecute the prophets who were
before you." Matthew V 3 10-12.

"When will Easter be this year?" I asked myself in early
1952.

From my arrest on July 25, 1951, to the end of the year, I
observed the outstanding feasts: The Assumption of Our
Blessed Lady, August 15th; The Nativity of Our Blessed Lady,
September 8, which is the anniversary of the foundation of
the society of the Missionaries of the Divine Word (S.V.D.);
St. Michael's, September 29; St. Teresa of Lisieux, October 3;
St. Francis Assisi, October 4; SL Francis Xavier, December 3;
the Immaculate Conception, December 8; Christmas; and
Circumcision, January isL

All these are immovable.

103

Four Years in a Red Hell

There were many movable feast days approaching, all
reckoned on the date of Easter, which changes, year for year:
Ash Wednesday, Passion Sunday, Palm Sunday, Holy Week,
Easter, Pentecost, Corpus Christi, Trinity Sunday.

Easter is the first Sunday after the first full moon following
the vernal equinox, which is March 2ist.

I dared not inquire the date of Easter.

So I asked the date of the corning Chinese New Year, usually
at the end of our January or the beginning of February. This
is a new moon. A full moon is on the fourteenth day following.
So I calculated Easter from the Chinese New Year. From
Easter, I calculated the entire liturgical period from Ash
Wednesday to Trinity Sunday.

In the best manner I could I lived this liturgical period.
Since I fasted every day in Ts'ao Lan Tzu, there was no diffi
culty in perfectly observing the Lenten fast. I commemorated
the beautiful feasts, especially Ash Wednesday, Holy Week,
Easter, Pentecost, and Trinity, with special meditations and
prayers.

Each year in prison, I fixed the Easter and worked out the
movable feasts of its period, observing these lovely days.

104

'22

Another Denial

"Please give me some more wo tou!" I said to Lei, the chu
chang.

By this time, the winter of 1952, I had learned to eat wo
tou, the steamed lumps of saltless, unleavened mixture of a
low grade of corn or maize, and water.

I was not allowed to take my wo tou from the bowl con
taining it. It was given me by Lei, the chu chang.

At every meal he gave me a half a wo tou. On finishing this
I had to request more. He usually gave me a quarter of a wo
tou more with a scowl. He never gave me enough to satisfy
my hunger.

My total consumption of wo tou was one and a half a day,
at our two meals. The rest of the cell-mates themselves took
as much as they wanted,

I also received less pai tsai than the other cell-mates.

Slowly, I was starved.

The communists said that each prisoner receives as much
wo tou as he wants. This is a lie! And I am a witness to this
lief For some twelve weeks I was denied enough wo tou to
satisfy my hunger!

Let not the communists resort to their hypocritical defense
that they did not know of such "infractions of the prison rules!"
Such statements have been made and they are downright pre
varications, lies in plain English. All that goes on in each cell
is reported to the prison authorities who give minute instruc-

105

Four years in a Red Hell

tions to each chu chang regarding the treatment to be given
to each prisoner.

I was greatly reduced in weight. It was evident to all that
I was being starved and nothing was done to relieve me. I
was being starved to force me into a confession, true or false.

In April 1952, 1 was shocked one day when the crown on
my right, lower, back molar came loose. This crowned tooth
served as an anchor for a movable bridge. I had had this
crown put on by a Chinese dentist in Peking, a year and four
months before, in December 1950.

I wondered how I could get the dental care needed to reset
this crown or better to have it replaced by a new one.

As best I could in my poor Chinese, I reported to Lei, the
chu chang, what had happened and requested to see the
doctor to get dental care.

Lei flew into a rage, shouting that my request was out
rageous, and denied me the permission to petition the doctor.
The other cell-mates joined in heaping abuse on me an Amer
ican imperialist requesting dental care!

When opportunity offered itself and I had an interview
with the prison physician at Ts'ao Lan Tzu and often later
at Tzu Hsing Lu work prison, I requested dental care for this
loose crown as well as the other teeth that pained me. But
never was I given dental care, The most I received were some
tablets on two or three occasions at Tzu Hsing Lu prison, to
stop the pain.

From April 1952, to my release from prison September 10,
1955, a period of 3 years and 6 months, I suffered repeatedly
from prolonged, and at times severe, toothaches, without any
relief. Chewing was most painful.

This was another cunning manner in which I was tortured.

In the winter of 1952, I suffered much anguish of mind
over my false confession of being an F.B.I, agent and of falsely

106

Another Denial

accusing confreres out of China, out of reach of the cruel
Chinese communists, of being F.B.I, agents.

"Suppose the countries in which these confreres live were
taken over by communists, these confreres would be arrested
as F.B.L men because I had accused them of being such," I
thought.

All communist countries share the intelligence they get,
especially do they report their intelligence to their masters in
Moscow, Russia.

I decided that at the first opportunity, I would deny these
false confessions. I felt I was especially bound to deny the
false accusation of my confreres even if this cost me my life.
I would deny being an F.B.I, agent and all subsequent related
false confessions.

The opportunity came.

In late March 1952, a court official called me to the little
office in the prison compound for interviewing prisoners.

He opened up, "You are an F.B.L agent. Are you not?"

"I am not an F.B.I. agent!" I said without a moment's hesita
tion.

"What!" he shouted, "You deny you are an F.B.I, man after
having confessed that you are!"

"Yes," I said, "my confession of being an F.B.I, man was
false and all my other confessions relating to this were false."

"Did you tell this to your judge?" he said.

"Not yet," I replied, "I have not had an opportunity."

After shouting at me, pressing me to hold to my fake con
fession of being an F.B.I, agent, he then proceeded with his
other business.

On returning to my cell, I felt greatly relieved, but thought
that I would soon be shot. This was my seventh denial of being
an F.B.I, agent and I had no doubt that it was immediately
reported to my judge.

A week or so later, I was called out for a night court session.
A new judge was sitting on the bench. He wore a perpetual

107

Four Years in a Red Hell

sneer. He was quite young, looking like a young man of the
late twenties.

Evidently he was acquainted with my denial of being an
F.B.I, man.

He opened the session with the statement "You are an agent
of the U. S. Government!"

"I am not an agent of the U. S. Government!" I snapped
back.

The judge became furious, shouted at me and pounded the
desk, but I held to my statement.

"But you are a spy," he eventually said.
/ I hesitated, then replied, "Yes, I am a spy." I had formerly
said I was a spy. Everyone is a spy according to the Chinese
communists. Everyone who exercises any sense perception is
collecting intelligence. Everyone who expresses any ideas, by
talking, writing, moving the hands, and the like, is passing on
intelligence.

This may sound fantastic.

It seems fantastic, but it is true.

So I admitted I was a spy.

The judge then proceeded with the main questions for
which he had called me.

108

23-

Crushed Hopes

"WELL I BE RELEASED?" I thought in the days of the spring
of 1952.

Spring is the season of hope. The severity of the Peking
winter was past and even in prison the increasing warmth
of the season, the budding of the few small trees in the prison
grounds, the occasional migrating birds that found their way
even into Ts'ao Lan Tzu aroused the stimuli that served as the
physiological basis for hope, hope of being released.

Aside from this was the hope born of confidence in prayer.
March is a month dedicated to St. Joseph, May to the Blessed
Virgin and June to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. During these
months I prayed with special earnest to their patrons: Jesus,
Mary and Joseph for the grace of eternal salvation for myself,
my relatives, friends, benefactors and persecutors; for an in
crease in sanctifying grace, the gifts of the Holy Ghost that
are infused with grace and for my release from prison. I was
confident that the Sacred Heart of Jesus would hear my prayer,
and grant my petitions in His own, good way. If He would not
obtain my release from prison, He would grant me something
better. So I had confidence in Him and in the petitions of His
Blessed Mother Mary and His Foster Father Joseph before
His divine throne, on my behalf.

In mid June, Wang and I were ordered to pack up our be
longings. I was excited. "Perhaps," I thought, "Wang and I
are to be released."

We were led out of the ccHnpound towards a jeep. I thought

109

Four Years in a Red Hett

for all the world we were to take the jeep, either to the rail
road station for a train to the prison farm which was consid
ered an improvement over Ts'ao Lan Tzu or to be released.

To my disappointment, however, the officer did not order
us to stop and board the jeep.

On we went, past the entrance to the courts, where an of
ficial release could be issued to us, on to a compound I had
never seen before; the east compound where we ended in
cell No. 14. 1 remained in this compound, moving to cells 8,
4, and 3, until early July 1954, a I*^ 6 over two years.

The chu chang, or cell leader was Tito, a man of medium
size with a heavy frame. He had been born in Odessa, Russia,
of a Serbian father and a Russian mother. Proud of his birth
in Russia, he also spoke and wrote Russian as well as Chinese
and English. He was a gifted, unscrupulous young man who
had the reputation among the prison officials of being one of
the most ruthless of the chu changs at persecuting, breaking
down and forcing prisoners to confess.

I suffered under his persecution until July 1953, a little over
a year.

He had been arrested on the same day I had, but had con
fessed so well, accused others so well, progressed so well in
his communist thinking and served so well as a chu chang,
that, as far as I know, he was released in a little less than two
years. He was also allowed to keep himself supplied with
extra food which he purchased about every month. Tito had
grown fat in Ts'ao Lan Tzu prison!

In this cell besides Tito, the Russian-Serbian and Wang,
the Chinese, both of whom spoke English, there was a third
English-speaking cell-mate, Luke. He was a foreigner, a physi
cian and a Catholic and had been assigned to "help" me recon
cile my Catholic convictions with the government policy of
communist China.

Luke had suffered much from Tito, who had been his chu
chang from about the end of August 1951, Tito, Luke and I

Crashed Hopes

had been arrested on the same day, 25 July, 1951. The prison
authorities missed fire when they put Luke and me together.
We sympathized with each other, not openly of course, but in
a manner each other understood. He did shout at me a few
times, but with a few exceptions in such a subdued manner
that his shouting consoled me instead of punishing me.

In early July, my regular judge of court No. 4 called me for
the first time since early January of the same year, 1952.

He opened by inquiring about my thoughts of the past half
year, since he had last called me.

Shielding myself by my ignorance of Chinese, I replied that
as I knew little or no Chinese, I was unable to understand the
newspaper articles when they were read or to follow the dis
cussions in the study periods.

"But what have you been thinking about?" he pressed,

"I expected to be deported," I replied.

"You expected to be deported? Why did you expect such?"

*TT ou had led me to believe that if I confessed, I would be
deported. Wang who had been sent by the court to "help* me,
told me on many occasions that I would be deported if I con
fessed. And I have confessed everything that could be con
sidered a crime in the eyes of the government. Therefore, I
expected to be deported," I said.

"You are a fool! You are deceiving yourself. No spy will be
deported, unless he enjoys diplomatic immunity, and you do
not enjoy such. Drop this foolish idea. 5 *

This was a shock to me. I was quite speechless, then said,
"But you gave me to understand and Wang who represented
you, clearly promised me to be deported, if I confessed, and
I confessed."

"The 'People's* government has changed its policy. No spy,
as you, will ever be deported."

"So there you are," I thought, "first this government prom
ises to deport you if you confess. Then you confess and are

111

Four Years in a Red HeU

told the government has changed its policy. You will not be
released. Communists do not keep their promises. They are
not to be trusted."

"What else has been on your mind?" he said.

"I corrected the false confession I made that I was an
F.B.I. agent."

"What!" he shouted. "We have recorded evidence that you
are an F.B.I, agent. You cannot deny it."

"What possible recorded evidence could the court have?"
I thought. "He is bluffing me, or the court has distorted a
piece of evidence. But the court, this communist court, this
prejudiced, anti-American, anti-Catholic court decides the
value of the evidence that comes into their hands. What
chances do I have?"

"But I am not an F.B.I, agent," I said, "and never was one."

So the farce continued. The judge shouted at me, threatened
to shoot me, insisted that he had evidence, recorded evidence,
against me. I maintained that my denial was true.

He ended by ordering me to return to my cell and recon
sider my denial.

112

24-

The Good Sisters of Fu Jen

ON BZTURNING to my cell from the court, I was dejected by
the realization that the government planned not to deport me.
I was, however, pleased that I had persevered in my denial of
being an F.B.L man.

I had deep misgiving, however, over the judge's declara
tion that the court had recorded evidence of my being an
F.B.I, agent. "Tenuous evidence/' I thought, "that the court
alone would evaluate/'

Some months later the judge accused me of supplying intel
ligence over the phone to an American vice consul. He said I
had investigated a certain priest of Fu Jen University (whose
name he gave ) and reported the results to the vice consul who,
he said, was an F.B.I, man. The particular priest, a member of
the Divine Word Missionaries, was on the staff of Fu Jen Uni
versity and had left for the U. S. for advanced university
studies. The U. S. consulate actually had called me on the
phone, inquiring about him, asking for my confirmation or
denial of his being on the Fu Jen staff and a character report
on him.

As the rector of Fu Jen University and the Fu Jen com
munity, I was the first to be approached about this matter and
I informed the vice consul there and then over the phone,
that the priest in question was what he claimed to be and I
gave him a good and true character recommendation. At this
time, my phone calls were tapped and recorded. Hence, I

1*3

Four Years in a Red Hell

concluded that the so-called recorded evidence the court had
of me being an F.B.I, agent, was the recorded conversation I
had with this vice consul over this priest.

On returning to my cell after this court session, Tito, the
Russian-Serbian chu chang, Wang, the Chinese merchant and
Luke, the foreign physician, all three English-speaking,
started to work on me, to "help" me retract my denial.

For some days these three pressed, urged and lectured me.
Tito fumed and shouted around. Wang was a close second.
I remember how this returned student from the U.S.A.,
throwing his arms in the air, shouted, "Rigney, you are an
enemy of my country, the 'People's' China. I will treat you as
an American soldier in Korea, fighting my country. If I had
a gun here, I would shoot you!"

Luke, the foreign physician, joined in a half-hearted man
ner, advising me to look at my problem from the "People's"
point of view.

At last, worn out, I again admitted I was an F.B.I, agent.

Then followed court sessions for several days and nights,
in which the judge pressed me to confess more and to explain
why I denied my confession.

The cell-mates continued this torture when I was not in
court. Once in desperation, I said, "I denied because in my
heart I know I am not an F.B.I. man."

At this, there was an outburst of fury, cursing and lecturing
from the cell-mates that lasted for days until I retracted this.,
the ninth denial.

I was truly wretched.

In February of this year, 1952, the court instructed me to
write a note to the sisters who sent supply packages to the
other Divine Word Missionaries in the prison of Ts'ao Lan
Tzu. This in a way was bad news since it indicated that my

114

The Good Sisters of Fu Jen

confreres in Fu Jen were either arrested or deported. On the
other hand I welcomed the needed supplies the sisters might
send. So I wrote a note to these sisters, the Holy Ghost Mis
sionary Sisters ( S.Sp.S. ) , who had taught at Fu Jen University
and had been in charge of the Women's college there.*

In about a week, these good German and Chinese Sisters
sent me a package containing shou chih (toilet paper), one
or two handkerchiefs, soap, salt and about a pound of assorted
food: sandwiches, a little meat, peanuts. More they were not
allowed to send.

Every three weeks thereafter, on a Monday, these sisters
sent me a package usually of shou chih and soap. No food was
allowed. These packages were little in themselves but great
in the message they conveyed; that the sisters were still in
Peking, that they still thought and prayed for me, that I was
not entirely abandoned, that I still had a few friends who were
able and willing to help me. God bless those good sisters!
Every three weeks they prepared my package, and brought it
to the prison, standing in line, awaiting their turn to hand
over my package to the rude, uncouth communist Sepo who
freely abused them,

They risked their safety for me.

How can I ever forget them?

How can I ever repay them?

I felt they were the last friends I had!

I knew my relatives and friends would have done anything
to help me, but the barbarous, hypocritical, perfidious, inhu
man disciples of Karl Marx prevented them.

I looked forward and counted the days for the arrival of
these packages, these messages of fidelity.

Then one day they stopped. One third Monday in October
1952, no package was delivered to me. The officer came and

* The American members of Holy Ghost Missionary Sisters bad already been
sent back to HoJy Ghost: Convent, Techny, Illinois, by Father Rigney .

"5

Four Years in a Red HeU

threw into the cell packages for other prisoners, but none for
me. He gave no explanation.

Communists seldom give explanations.

Communists are forever pressing their victims and their
opponents to give explanations.

Communists do not play their games squarely.

Communists do not keep the rules that they demand their
victims and opponents keep.

Shame on the communists!

Shame on their dirty tricks their dirty tactics!

When these packages stopped, I feared that the good Ger
man sisters were either imprisoned or deported and the good
Chinese sisters were imprisoned or prevented from helping
me. I worried very much for these sisters. I inquired why the
packages ceased to be delivered, but the disciples of Karl
Marx persisted in giving no explanations.

On the other hand, I later learned the Sepo guards refused
to accept packages from the sisters for me. No explanations
were given. The sisters then thought I was dead.

My relatives, my friends thought I was dead.

The communists sat back and smiled.

All sadists smile at the sufferings of their victims.

One word from the Chinese communists would have saved
the heartaches of my relatives, but what do the Chinese com
munists care about human sufferings as long as they can rule,
as long as they are the neo-aristocracy, the neo-nobility of
China.

The chilly weather of the Peking October came, in that
1952. Again I suffered from the cold. In the spring of 1952, on
the advice of the chu chang, I had sent all my warm, winter
clothing to the sisters to keep for me and mend for me.

Now the good sisters were not allowed to send me any
thing, either shou chih, soap or winter clothing and bedding.
I suffered from the cold. The damp cells were not heated un-

116

The Good Sisters of Fu Jen

til late November. I was issued Japanese cotton jacket and
pants, but soon these were insufficient. My feet moreover
were always cold.

Finally, I was allowed to purchase woolen socks and a cot
ton padded hat. Purchasing these brought my supply of
money down.

In the June of 1953, my money was low and Peking prices
were high. A bar of laundry soap about half the size of a bar
of American Family laundry soap cost the equivalent of 15
U. S. cents.

Furthermore, I did not know how long I would be in prison
or if I would be moved away from my Peking prison where I
had lived and could best get money, if at all.

So I asked permission to write to a certain priest of influence
in Peking, whom I had aided, for money.

In a week's time the prison officer told me I should not
write to this priest for aid since he would not help a reaction
ary like me, but I could write to the sisters who had formerly
sent me supplies, and ask them to send me shou chih, soap
and even some food, but no money.

This was a doubly good announcement: first, it conveyed
that happy news that the Fu Jen Sisters, Holy Ghost Mission
ary Sisters ( S.Sp.S. ) , were still in Peking and secondly, I could
get supplies.

I wrote to the good sisters.

On the following Monday, the officer brought me first a
bundle of shou chih, soap, etc. and then to my great surprise
a big basket of food all from the good sisters.

It was during a class period and consequently, I was not
allowed to examine these two packages.

I sat on the edge of the kang, looking at the big basket of
food and could see white bread, sausages, a jar of butter, sugar,
and the like.

I was deeply moved. My eyes soon became moistened. The

117

Four Jears in a Red Hell

from more persecution that would otherwise have been meted
out to us for being friends. We could hate each other, but we
could not manifest any brotherly love towards each other.
Hell is like that damned souls hate each other, never love
each other. And Ts'ao Lan Tzu was modeled after hell. Its
planners must have been inspired by one well acquainted with
heU.

Wang, the merchant, showered me with voluminous curses
as he saw what he thought was the ground for his release
slip away.

Tito, the Russian-Serbian, bellowed and behaved like a
wild man as he realized that he had failed in his assignment.

Luke, the physician, shouted but in an unconvincing man
ner. I had a feeling of satisfaction that now Luke would not
believe me an F.B J. agent, if he ever had, because it would
be foolhardy to write and sign such a statement if it were not
true. Such a repudiation means requesting severe punish
ment, even death, if the government declares it false.

I think I was the calmest in the cell although what I was
doing placed me in the position of the most danger. I was calm
because my conscience was at peace. I had for the tenth and,
what I then firmly resolved to be, the last time repudiated the
false confession I had made fourteen months before, that I
was an F.B.I, agent. I thought I might get shot for this or
receive a long prison sentence of twenty or more years, but
come what may, I was back on the path of truth. Death or a
long prison sentence was preferred to the ignominy of a life
of falsehood.

When the ink of the fingerprint dried, I handed my written
repudiation and denial of my false F.B.L confession to Tito.

He took it, then shouted, "Why did you make the false
confession?"
, "To deceive the government," I replied.

On a former occasion when the same question was asked,
I replied, "To avoid being tortured." I was severely tou

The Lost Denial

chenged for this because it was the wrong answer. The "Peo
ple's" government never tortures anyone, according to their
statement. But their statements generally must be understood
in the opposite meaning.

"Why did you want to deceive the government?" Tito
roared, pounding on the little table on the kang.

No matter what a prisoner answers, there is always one
more question the disciples of Karl Marx hurl at a victim be
ing questioned: "Why did you say (or do) that?" There is
just no end to a discussion with them until you confess some
heinous crime, true or false, or else accuse others, truly or
falsely.

The entire cell was in an uproar. I was being tou chenged.
All the cell-mates had gathered around me, shouting at me,
cursing me, questioning me, as they pointed their fingers into
my face, while I sat on the kang.

It was in the evening.

Suddenly the door opened and the officer ordered all the
cell-mates to go to the movie that was soon to be shown. Never
had I been allowed to attend one of the movies or stage per
formances that came every month or so.

We all filed out into a line in the court. A count of the pris
oners was made. We then were led to a cold hall and ordered
to sit on the dirty floor.

The movie was a propaganda film against the Americans
fighting in Korea. Hie clapping of the prisoners shocked me.
Every time an American plane was depicted as shot down, or
an American soldier was shown falling dead, or corpses of
killed American soldiers appeared, there was loud clapping
of hands of the prisoners. I sat there without clapping, but
this only invited more persecution, since Sepo guards kept
sharp eyes to detect if any prisoner failed to join in the clap
ping in the so-called "free" China.

On the following morning, I was ordered to sit motionless on

121

Four "Years in a Red Hell

the kang with my legs crossed and my head against the wall.
Whenever I moved, as I sat in this position which was espe
cially painful for my legs, the cell-mates shouted at me and
hit me in the back.

From rising to retiring, excepting for meals and going to
the toilet, I had to sit in this cramped, painful position for
eight days.

Besides praying, I watched the sunlight creep along the
wall. If I went to sleep, the cell-mates shouted at me, cursing
me, ordering me to stay awake.

This torture was to induce me to confess what I had been
hiding by making a false confession.

The officer said no false confession is ever made in Ts'ao
Lan Tzu unless to hide a bigger crime. Now, I was pressed to
confess the big crime I had been hiding by my false F.B.I.
confession.

I insisted I had attempted to hide no crime.

In these days I told Tito that I had not been given to lying,
and the false confession I had made, brought me much men
tal anguish.

"You Protestant ministers and Catholic priests are profes
sional liars!** Tito shouted. ""You have not the slightest idea of
the truth. You, Rigney, a Catholic priest, are an habitual liar.
You are a very low character. You are a spy, worse than a
murderer. You are the worst, most depraved character I have
ever met!

"In Harbin there used to be a secret society known as the
Sadists. To be eligible to join this society, one must either
have murdered someone in cold blood or have raped a little
girl below 7 years of age. You, Rigney, are guilty of worse
crimes than murder and rape. Therefore, you are eligible to
join the Sadists of Harbin."

For one year I listened to insults of this type from Tito.

-

26

Tou Cheng and Self Criticism

FROM THE early part of December 1952, until the early part
of January, 1953, 1 was subjected to daily tou chengiag and
self criticism. Tito, the Russian-Serbian chu chang led this
attempt to make me either retract my denial of my false
F.B.I, confession or confess some other spying connection.

"That Rigney," Tito said to Luke, "is an Amer
ican agent who joined the S.V.D/s (Latin abbreviation for
Divine Word Missionaries) to get control of its American
branch. The U. S. government obtained control of the Amer
ican S.V.D. in this way. Rigney controls them for the U. S.
government. He is no priest. He is an American agent dis
guised as a priest. You d fool, Luke, can't you see that!"

So Tito went on talking to Luke in a subdued voice as if he
were telling him something confidential. But he spoke loud
enough for me to hear him. In this way Tito suggested to me
what I should confess. He reported and received instructions
at least once a day from the prison authorities concerning me.

As a matter of fact, I joined the Divine Word Missionaries
as a student in 1918, when I was 17 years old. It does seem
quite incredible for one of that age to be a qualified, highly
trained agent but the communists are not much concerned
with the credibility or incredibility of statements. They are
interested in melodramatic confessions or accusations.
Whether they are true or false, libelous or not, is of quite a
secondary consideration.

Day after day, I was obliged to reveal my thoughts to this

123

Four Years in a Red Hell

group of three. To have refused to at least attempt this, or to
have kept silent, would have brought on worse tortures. The
only alternatives to the many and diabolically cunning tor
tures of the communists of Peking was either losing one's mind
or getting shot. In the case of the former, new kinds of tortures
were substituted for the old ones, as I saw when cell-mates
who had gone stark mad underwent tortures. In the case of
the latter, when a prisoner sought execution as a surcease, he
was dealt tortures from which death was truly a relief, as my
judge explained to me one day.

"What do you think of communists?" Tito bellowed.

"I do not and never will accept their philosophy of Marxist
communism, because it is based on dialectical materialism
and as a Catholic, I cannot accept this materialistic philoso
phy. I would prefer death to being a communist," I said.

"You are using diplomatic language, you liar! Why don't
you speak out and say you hate the communists/'

"I do not hate communists. It is unchristian to hate anyone.
I do hate communism, dialectical materialistic philosophy
that constitutes the fundamentals of communism. But I do
not hate communists, on the contrary, I pray every day for the
spiritual welfare of the communists of this prison, of Peking
and of all China, but I hate their philosophy."

"What is the difference, Rigney, call a spade a spade. You
hate communists.

"You also hate the government of China, you Wall Street
imperialist," he added.

"I hate the communist aspect of the government of China."

"You hate the Chinese communist government!"

Then he jotted down in his notebook that Rigney says he
hates the communists. Rigney says he hates the People's gov
ernment of China.

So Tito's standing was enhanced by reporting that he had
succeeded in wringing such incriminating statements out of
Rigney, the American imperialist.

124

Tou Cheng and Self Criticism

"Now Rigney, tomorrow you must expose your thoughts
about us three: Wang, Luke and me. You will have all night
to examine your thoughts," Tito said one night in this month
or more, of the ordeal I was going through.

"Well Rigney," Tito said with a sneer after he, Wang and
Luke gathered around me the next morning, "what do you
think of me?" He evidently thought I would fear to be frank
and as a consequence he could deal out to me plenty of his
insults, shoutings, and the like tortures.

"You, Tito, are an opportunist," I said as he winced under
this unexpected exposure.

"'You served with the communists in their "Liberation army'
when this was advantageous.

"You then served with the Kuomintang when this was to
your advantage.

"You later had close connections and made money on the
Americans, some of whom were in the pay of the U. S. gov
ernment, when this was to your advantage.

"Now you are doing your best to serve the communists
again because they are in control.

"If the Americans would return, you would be back with
them, making money off of them.

"You are an opportunist. It is not pleasant for me to tell you
this but you asked for it. You ordered me to sincerely and
truthfully reveal my thoughts about you and I have."

In a fit of rage Tito pounded the kang and shouted, "Rigney,
if the Americans would ever come back, I would kill you with
a wooden dagger, the bloodiest and most painful way I know
to loll you, Aid the Marines would find me weeping over
your dead body!"

Thus my month of tou chenging, self-criticism went on.
Tito went to great lengths telling me, over and over again,
"Rigney you are an innate liar. It is time you started to tell the
truth. You are not fit to confess. As a matter of fact the govern
ment has not decided whether to allow you to confess or to

125

Four Years in a Red HeU

shoot you. As you are now going, you will never leave Ts'ao
Lan Tzu alive, except for a short one-way journey to the Tien
Chlao, the execution grounds."

Wang was a close second to Tito as a master of the "art" of
insulting and torturing and I was his target.

All this may seem trifling but to a prisoner of Ts'ao Lan Tzu
it was not.

In the Autumn of 1951, the court questioned me about my
knowledge of the Chinese Third Party Government (which
was neither Kuomintang nor Communist) program of the
U. S. A. for China.

The judge accused me of being an American Government
agent to contact Chinese leaders for the development of this
Third Party.

It was true that I knew Dr. Hu Shih, Chancellor of the
National Peking University and member of the Board of
Trustees of Fu Jen University. He had been ambassador to the
United States and was a noted scholar and diplomat.

In the spring of 1948, 1 called on Dr. Hu Shih, as a member
of The Board of Trustees of Fu Jen, to consult with him about
the future policy of Fu Jen.

I must suppose that at least one of the servants of Dr. Hu
Shih reported to the communists about my visit with Dr.
Hu Shih.

I had also attended two receptions of General Li Chung-
Jen, while he was head of the North China Government under
the nationalists.

Both Dr. Hu Shih and General Li Chung- Jen were in the
U. S. A, as reputed leaders of the Third Party.

I had likewise attended two banquets given by General
Fu Tso-I, the last Nationalist commander of Peiping as well
as the last head of the North China Government of Nationalist
China.

Fu Tso-I had been an outstanding anti-communist, a capa-

126

Tou Cheng and Self Criticism

ble military strategist and a pro-American. In 1949, he went
over, lock, stock and barrel, to the communist side, surrender
ing Peiping, his large armies and huge military supplies. As
his reward he became cabinet Minister of Water Conservancy
of the communist government.

I also knew Ho Sze-yuan, Mayor of Peiping 1946-1948. He
had been Military Governor of Shantung. In 1949, he went
over to the communist side in Peiping.

Hu-Shih, Li Chung- Jen, Fu Tso-I and Ho Sze-yuan, were
regarded as liberal and potential leaders of a Third Party
Government.

I told the court I knew nothing special or particular about
the Third Party Government movement beyond knowing the
above mentioned outstanding Chinese,

Later in the winter of 1953, 1 was called to the judge who
demanded that I confess all my activities on behalf of the
Third Party Government, *,

I told him I knew nothing beyoiii what I had told him be
fore in 1951.

"What! You liar! Stop your lying!" he barked. "You have
been in prison for almost two years and have not yet reformed!
You do not understand the government's policy. You know
much about the American attempt to form a Third Party
Government in China. I see you do not want to help yourself."

So he went on, abusing me, for at least one hour.

I held my ground, truthfully stating that I knew nothing
about this Third Party beyond what was commonly known.

127

-

27

An Unforgetting, Forgotten Prisoner

"STALIN is SICK/' Tito said as he told me the message broad
casted over the prison loud speaker system on a morning in
early March 1953.

"Stalin is sick?" I thought. "What does that mean?"

In some parts of the world when a leader takes ill, no public
announcements are made. When he dies, an announcement is
made that he is sick. Sometime later, usually a few days, when
the deceased leader's party have taken measures to secure
themselves, a notice is published that the leader has passed
away. "Stalin must be dead," I thought.

A few hours kter, around noon, there was another message
broadcasted. All the other cell-mates looked very solemn. I
asked Tito what the message was.

"Marshal Stalin is dead," he said in mournful cadences.

It seemed all the prisoners were stunned and on their guard.

The large cloth covered window towards the courtyard
was opened in our cell, as in a nearby cell where an American
woman was kept prisoner. A special Sepo guard marched back
and forth between the cells where this American woman and
I were held. This seemed to me to be a special guard to watch
us two Americans and detect any of our possible derogatory
remarks about the deceased dictator or signs of jubilation over
his being called to judgment. I sat particularly quiet.

As I expected, Tito said on the following day, "Well Rigney,
what thoughts are on your mind over the passing of Marshal
Stalin?"

128

An Unforgetti ng, Forgotten Prisoner

I formulated a statement such as I thought President Eisen
hower, or Secretary of State Dulles would make in their offi
cial diplomatic messages of condolence to the Kremlin.

"The passing of Stalin is a great loss to the people of the
Soviet Union," I replied.

"Rigney," Tito said as he appeared to be on the verge of
breaking down with grief, "the passing of Marshal Stalin is a
great loss to all the people of the entire world."

I was relieved that I had hurdled this loaded question with
such ease.

A few days later, all prisoners had to stand silent and at
attention for five minutes, while cannons in the Red Square
before the Tien An Men (the main entrance to the old im
perial palace) fired a salute during the memorial services held
there for Stalin.

The days passed. I continued to be isolated, set in a comer
by Tito, not allowed to play cards in free time.

Spring came and with it new hopes of being released. The
United Nations command in Korea opened negotiations with
the Korean and Chinese communists to exchange prisoners.

I hoped that we civilian prisoners of nations participating
in the U.N.O. Army would be released.

In early July, my judge called me to a court session. Again
he asked me how I had gotten on during the passed year and
what I was thinking about.

I told him I was pleased over the exchange of prisoners m
Korea.

He told me to harbor no illusionary hopes of being included
among those exchanged. "The Americans," he told me, "were
forced by the 'people* of the world to exchange prisoners.
This was a great victory for the people. The stronger the "peo
ple's* China gets, the more severely it will deal with criminals
like you."

He then gave me questions to guide me in writing up my

129

Four Years in a Red HeU

confession. He wanted it done on special paper in a great
hurry. Luke said, "There must be some special reason why the
judge has set a deadline for your confession, Rigney. It looks
like your case is being prepared for settlement."

I worked hard four days and nights without interruption
writing, writing this confession, in carefully written hand,
writing with a steel pen. I held to my denial of being an F.B.I.
agent and was allowed to write this confession without con
fessing membership in this organization.

Thus my two year's struggle over my confession of being an
F.B.I, agent closed with my tenth repudiation made in Oc
tober 1952, being, at least, tentatively accepted. I felt this was
a victory for me.

In the midst of writing this confession, Tito was told one
midnight to pack up his belongings. He had said the court
had decided to grant him clemency because he had confessed
well, accused others well and kept the prison rules. He also
left some of his food for the cell-mates: an indication he was
being released.

After Tito left, to the relief of all, four chu changs succeeded
each other until a nasty, effeminate character, named Teng
(pronounced "Dung"), took over.

Teng was a selfish character. On Sundays, the only cards
that could be played were the kind he liked. And he selected
players that suited him. He declared me undesirable: an
American imperialist and a Vatican imperialist*

He contradicted me wherever and whenever he could.
Nothing I did was acceptable. I could never wash the floor
properly. No matter how careful I was, no matter how often
I rinsed the wash rags, there was always something wrong
with my work.

Once, by accident I spilled one or two drops of drinking
water on another cell-mate's shou chih (toilet paper). This
was nothing since the water soon dried, doing no damage to

An Unforgetting, Forgotten Prisoner

the toilet paper. Teng, however, flew into a rage and began
shouting at me, insulting me, cursing me. At this, of course,
the rest of the cell-mates also began doing the same, bellowing
at me, insulting and cursing me.

Teng was my chu chang for about six months and they ware
bitter six months.

On top of the persecution of the cell-mates, two events oc
curred that dejected me: the escape (or release, as claimed
by the communists) of some 26,000 Chinese and Korean pris
oners. The Chinese communists were furious over this. They
accused the Americans of abducting these prisoners and forc
ing them into the armies of the Republic of Korea and the
National Government of China. I thought we American civil
ian prisoners would have to suffer for this loss of face of the
communists. We were victims of the cold war.

The second event was the release of some 22,000 prisoners
by the U.N.O. staff in Korea.

The Chinese communists were incensed by this. It was a
great loss of face for them. They again accused the Americans
of abducting these prisoners and forcing them into the armies
of the Republic of Korea and the National Government of
China.

It seemed to me that we civilian American prisoners were
forgotten. There was evidently much interest and pains taken
by tLN.O. and especially the Americans to secure the release
of these prisoners who had taken up arms against the U.S.A.
But what was being done for us civilian Americans who had
never taken up arms against U.N.O. or the U.S A.? I realized,
however, that the U.S.A. was in a position in which they could
do little or nothing for us.

I could never forget my relatives and friends, the society to
which I belonged the Divine Word Missionaries and my
country. But it seemed they had forgotten me or were unable
to help me.

Four Years in a Red Hell

I felt as if I were the unforgetting, forgotten man. I recalled
how quickly people in Peking forgot about priests I had
known who had been arrested before me. In a few months
they were quite forgotten by all but their own confreres.

I was an unf orgetting, forgotten prisoner.

13 2

'28

Drowsiness

"Rui Ko Ni! Are you sleeping again! Wake up! What do you
mean by disobeying the rules again!"

From the autumn of 1951, when my daily night court ses
sions came to an end to the summer of 1955, when I was
placed in solitary confinement, I found it difficult to stay
awake throughout the day and evenings and frequently fell
asleep.

In the last eight weeks of my imprisonment while in soli
tary confinement, away from the persecution of my cell-mates,
I had no difficulty in staying awake.

Before this, it was most fatiguing to sit, hour after hour,
throughout the day and evening, in a corner of the cell, day
after day, week after week, month after month, one year, two
years, three years isolated, shunned and persecuted by cell
mates, like a leper, an outcast, a despised, discredited individ
ual who had lost all face, who once had been influential and
respected but now was powerless, a condemned criminal to be
shunned; a vile reptile to be crushed and most of all a valu
able, wonderful object, a scapegoat, on which an opportunistic
prisoner could vent his hatred, to demonstrate to the commu
nist government how pro-communist he had become.

As I learned from die statements of many prisoners, the
average eel-mate thought about me along such lines as the
following: "This Rigney, look at him! He is a foreigner, an
American! He is so thin, weak and helpless!

Four Jears in a Red Hett

"He is of no use!

"He cannot profit me!

"Perhaps in the past, his friendship would have been valu
able. He could have given me a job or recommended me to a
friend of his for a job. He could have given me direct assistance
as he did countless students of Fu Jen University and other
needy people.

"But that is all of the past! What can he do now? Now! The
present!

"Nothing! He is an American and America is no longer
powerful. She is losing the Korean War, her air force is poor,
her army fears to fight. America is a paper tiger. The Soviet
Union is now the most powerful country in the world. Even
the 'People's' China is dealing the armed forces of the U. S. A.
an ignominious defeat in Korea.

"Rigney is also a Catholic, and the Catholic Church is lined
up with Wall Street against communism!

"He is a sheng fu (priest). Formerly a sheng fu could help
me whether I was a Catholic or not, but now a sheng fu is
useless.

"I must look to myself and do what I can for my own present
and future needs.

"The communists now control China. For a long time I be
lieved America would prevent the communists from gaining
China and later, after the Reds came, I thought America
would overthrow them. But all my ideas of the power of the
U. S. A. have been wrong. The communists are strong and will
remain in power.

"I must support the communists and forget about America
who will never assume the position of influence in China she
formerly had.

"The Chinese communists hate America and the Catholic
Church. Therefore, I must show hatred of all things American
and Catholic. I must show hatred of Americans and Catholics,

Drowsiness

especially Catholic priests who are not pro-communist,

"Rigney is an American and a Catholic priest and he re
fuses to come over to the communist side. Therefore, I must
not show any sympathy with him; on the contrary, I will im
prove my standing with the prison and communist authori
ties if I show hatred of him!

"I will show hatred of him."

The average prisoner was daily subjected to communist
propaganda. In time he came completely under this influence
since there was no free press to acquaint him with the other
side of current questions.

He was in an intellectual gas chamber, in which pure air is
slowly but surely replaced by carbon monoxide gas, In time
he comes under the influence of the poisonous fumes and falls
into a stupor, unconscious of reality around him. Finally he
dies, mentally.

Can anyone be surprised then if such prisoners become
brainwashed, especially if they kck a solid philosophical
foundation as most prisoners I knew did?

So there I was, isolated in a corner of the cell, with cell
mates tense in their eagerness to focus their wrath on me, an
"unreformed" American Catholic priest.

Daily, under the mental strain of Ts'ao Lan Tzu and later
Tzu Hsing Lu prison life, drowsiness came over me during the
day or evening. I fought it off but usually my worn-out men
tal and nervous faculties succumbed to sleep.

Sometimes I woke without having been detected.

Often, I was not so fortunate, but some zealous cell-mate
discovered this "crime" and shouted TRui Ko Ni, are you sleep
ing again! Wake up! What do you mean by disobeying the
rules again!"

Then usually followed a sound volley of abusive language,
bellowed at me by the chu chang and cell-mates.

At times, I was subjected to a tou cheng, in which I was

135

Four Years in a Red Hell

accused of sleeping because I was tired as a result of worrying
over unconfessed crimes, and the like. What were these
crimes? What was I hiding? I was asked.

Explanations of mental exhaustion were repudiated and
only precipitated more vehement tou chenging.

The best way was simply to say nothing, to weather the
storm. But until the middle of 1955, I suffered from this in
ability to stay awake during the ten hours of daily, so-called
study periods, or during the many and long kai huai (meet
ings ) or lectures by the prison authorities on kai ts'ao (refor
mation).

This was especially the case in 1952, 1953, and up to Sep
tember 21, 1954 when I was sentenced and removed to Tzu
Hsing Lu prison.

136

29-

On the Verge of a Mental Breakdown

"SIGN AND FINGERPRINT this,"the judge said as he threw back
to me the statement I had written.

I had been called to a court session with a strange judge
who spoke English. He had asked me about the Catholic stu
dents of Fu Jen University. My reports about them were not
incriminating. The judge, as usual in such cases, was angry.
After all, he was not so much interested in a true statement
about these good Catholic students as he was in getting
grounds, true or false, to persecute them, to destroy the Cath
olic faith in them, to turn them on their former teachers at Fu
Jen, to turn them against their bishops and priests.

After about two hours of fruitless questioning, he ordered
me to make a written statement there and then, in the court
room.

I sat on a bench before a small tea table and began to write
with the steel pen and ink, on the cheap manila paper pro
vided by the court.

It seemed difficult to write.

"I must write," I thought. I exerted unusual effort to write.
"I must write something." So I wrote, abbreviating many
words ordinarily not abbreviated.

"Let me see what you have written," the judge said as I
finished.

"Write this over!" he shouted after glancing at the statement

137

Four Years in a Red Hell

and throwing it back to me, "and write clearly. I cannot read
this*

So I sat down again and copied my statement, making ef
forts to write clearly and without the unconventional abbre
viations I had used. On finishing, I handed my statement to
the judge. He took it and looked at it.

"Sign and fingerprint this/' he said as he threw my statement
back to me.

I signed in Chinese and English as usual.

Then I did a very strange thing.

Raising my finger in the air, I went through the motions of
rolling my right index finger tip as if the ink pad were sus
pended in the air.

"This will do," I thought, "this is all make-believe anyway."

Then I rolled my finger tip on my statement, next to my
signature, and returned the statement to the judge who was
absorbed with a book or some paper.

He took one glance, grew angry, threw first my statement
back to me, then the ink pad at his side, shouting, "Finger
print this! I told you to fingerprint it!"

In bewilderment, I then properly fingerprinted my state
ment

On my way to my cell, a fear came over me, a new kind of
fear I had never experienced in my life.

"What have I done?" I thought. "Lifting my hand in the air
and rolling my finger for ink that was not there! This is not the
way a normal man acts! Can it be that I am losing my mind?"

I feared to answer this question.

Then I remembered back 38 years to the days when I had
studied Shakespeare's King Lear in my preparatory seminary
days. King Lear realized he was losing his mind. I remembered
a footnote stating that often a person loosing his mind realizes
that lie is going insane.

This memory frightened me more.

138

On the Verge of a Mental Breakdown

On returning to my cell, I took my place on the kang in a
corner of the cell, where I sat, that day in January 1954, two
years and six months after my arrest, and reviewed my conduct
in the courtroom.

The cell-mates told me in those days that I spoke in my
sleep as I had never done before.

It was difficult for me to make up my mind to do anything.
Often I sat in my corner, an isolated prisoner, especially des
pised and persecuted by the other cell-mates, unable to arouse
myself to get up, for instance, and walk to the other end of the
cell to look for my notebook which I had left there.

One of these days, the members of the cell were ordered to
prepare for a bath. The other cell-mates quickly got their soap,
if they had any, and a little towel that served for a wash rag
and after being wrung for a towel.

I sat there, on the edge of the kang, motionless and indif
ferent.

"Rigney, do you have your towel?" the English-speaking
cell-mate who was allowed to speak to me in English, asked
me.

"I am prepared," I said.

When we were ordered to leave for bath, I joined the cell
mates, without soap or towel.

In the bathing pool, I simply splashed water on myself for
a few minutes, then went to the room where our clothes were
heaped on the floor. I was wet and shivering from the January
cold. In this condition I dressed and returned to my ceH, walk
ing about 1000 feet,

I was happy that no one saw that I had had no towel, else
I would have been tou chenged by all the cell-mates for not
taking one. The cell-mates took every opportunity they could
to contradict me, shout at me, tou cheng me, the American
imperialist, the Catholic priest.

Several incidents as the above occurred. For some of them

139

Four Years in a Red Hell

I was punished when I should have received kindness. Teng,
the chu chang, however, was too selfish to forego an oppor
tunity to advance himself at my expense.

On another occasion I was given a paper, a report to write
for the court. I could hardly write, my hand was so unsteady.
But I wrote out the paper and handed it to the English-speak
ing cell-mate to be translated into Chinese.

At one glance he said, "Rigney, your handwriting is ter-
riblel How can I read it! You never wrote so poorly before."

< TThat is the best I can do," I said in a feeling of utter help
lessness. I felt for all the world as though I was breaking,
going to pieces, losing my mind.

Around this time, I drew the conclusion: "I am losing my
mind."

Then I resolved to make the greatest effort I could, to hold
myself together, to save myself from going stark mad as others
had gone.

"I will not let these cell-mates goaded on by the cruel, in
human communists, ruin me. I will disregard them." I re
solved and I begged God to help me.

So with this resolve, supported by all the effort I had, and
a redoubling of my prayers, I faced the future.

In a few days, I felt I had gotten hold of myself, with God's
help I had won. I had saved myself from going mad. The cell
mates said I no longer talked in my sleep. I was able to act, to
decide and carry out my decisions.

I was saved.

140

-

30

General Toil Chengs

"I HOPE THAT son of a b is shot," said chu chang Tito to
activist Wang one cold day in the winter of 1953, as these two
worthies returned to the cell

They had been called to attend a big tou cheng of four or
five prisoners, in the prison "hall." The shouts of the tou
chengers could be faintly heard in my cell. They sounded like
heinous cries from some distant inferno.

Both Tito and Wang related to the rest of the cell-mates the
details of the tou cheng. They were evidently proud and
elated for having been called to participate in it. And of course
the lesson of the tou cheng must be brought home to all pris
oners especially the stubborn, unreformed ones. Each gave
full details of the events : how the prisoners had been brought
forth separately, accused, denounced, and ordered to confess.

Some confessed and were dismissed, without further pun
ishment. Two failed in their confession and the zealous activ
ists demanded that they be shot. Each was handcuffed and
shackled and led away to solitary confinement.

The prison officer concluded by telling the activists that the
government appreciated their zeal and would consider then-
requests to shoot these two stubborn prisoners.

Tito and Wang each emphatically repeated their hope that
the "People Y* government would shoot these two prisoners
unreformed, stubborn, reactionary prisoners.

The other cell-mates vied with one another in loudly voic
ing their agreement with Tito aad Wang.

141

Four Years in a Red Hell

"Shoot them! Shoot them!" they shouted.

I remained silent, horrified at the thought that these two
poor wretches were facing death at the hypocritical, cow
ardly request of their fellow prisoners!

"What is on your mind, Rigney?" Tito asked. "What do you
think about this tou cheng? Do you agree with the rest of this
cell that they should get shot or do you sympathize with
them?"

"Yes, I feel sorry for them," I said, unable to hide my sym
pathy, "I do not like to have any prisoner shot. I hope the gov
ernment will not shoot them."

"That only shows, Rigney, how reactionary, unreformed
you are! You will be among the next to be so tou chenged, I
can assure you, and I hope the government shoots you!" Tito
shouted.

For weeks Tito repeatedly predicted that I would be pub
licly tou chenged.

The prison authorities, he said, were preparing for more
such tou chengs for such prisoners as me.

Then one day I was called out and lined up with a few pris
oners of other cells. I was resigned to a public tou chenging
with the activists, including Tito and Wang, who accom
panied me, demanding that I be shot.

It seems that there just is no end to the kinds of tortures to
which the Chinese communists submit their prisoners.

We were marched over to the "hall," a big room, with the
bare ground as the floor. Some one hundred prisoners were
present.

A name was called out. A frightened, pale prisoner arose or
was forced to arise and in a daze, made la's way to the front.
* It seemed all hell broke loose. Most of the hundred prisoners
sitting on the ground burst forth in screams and howls, curs
ing, abusing the poor wretch, who was forced to stand with
his head down.

142

General Tou CTiengs

Ever so often, an exceptionally zealous activist, throwing all
shame and self-respect to the winds, arose, rushed up to the
accused victim, waving his fist in his face and shouting, *Ti
tou! (Down with your headl)," seized his head and jerked
it down.

The accused made several efforts to confess but the crowd
shouted him out. Sometimes a large part of the crowd jumped
to their feet crowding around him, carrying on like so many
mad men.

At last, after about an hour of this, the officer stepped for
ward, put handcuffs and fetters on the accused, and led him
away.

Then a second name was called and a rather short-sized,
frightened man of refined features arose and walked before
the howling mob. He went through quite the same ordeal as
the first.

Wang at the end shouted to shoot him, and several times
rose to his feet shaking his fist, yelling accusations and curses.

This prisoner was also put in chains and led away.

On returning to our cell, Wang said that the second accused
was Wu, his brother-in-law. Wang was hoarse from his shout
ing at his own brother-in-law, shouting even for his execution.

I had refrained from all this shouting and as a consequence
was subjected to much questioning by Tito. At the end I had
to write a paper, expressing all my thoughts about these awful
ordeals.

I wrote that I did not like them and felt sorry for the ac
cused,

A year later, similar tou chengs were held again. This time
Wu who had suffered eight months in handcuffs and fetters
was among the mob and to my disgust was one of the most
zealous activists accusing, cursing the two victims.

A gam I was obliged to explain why I had showed such
sympathy and lack of interest in these tou chengs.

I wrote in detail about how I felt sorry for the accused and

Four Years in a Red Hell

how hypocritical I thought the other prisoners acted in accus
ing the two victims.

I wrote that Our Blessed Lord must have dealt with just
such a scene when he came on the woman who had been taken
in adultery, being accused and about to be stoned to death,
and how he wrote on the sand, "Let him without sin throw
the first stone."

But I thought that these two victims for whom I had so
much sympathy in a few weeks would be activists like Wu,
accusing others.

So the folly went on in Ts'ao Lan Tzu.

144

31-

Germ Warfare

As FAR as I can remember it was in the spring of 1952, that I
first learned of the charges made by the Chinese communists
that the Americans were conducting germ warfare in Korea.

I learned that there was something in the air from the car
toons in the papers that were sent around for reading. In many
cartoons, rats, notorious carriers of disease, were depicted,
being introduced, in one way or the other, into Korea, by the
Americans.

From these cartoons I deduced that the communist govern
ment was using characteristically dirty tactics to cover up
severe losses their armies were suffering in Korea from epi
demics by accusing the American Armed Forces of conducting
germ warfare.

The communist papers were full of articles bearing these
accusations and many study periods in prison were spent dis
cussing these articles of the local Peking press.

Then the confession of an American Air Force flyer was
published in English and Chinese by the communist press.
But this contained no conclusive evidence of such warfare.
The flyer stated that he had dropped dud bombs, which I
concluded could have been other than germ bombs.

A certain foreign Protestant minister made an investigation
in China and Korea of the evidence advanced by the Chinese
to prove the germ warfare of the Americans in Korea. He con
cluded that tie accusations of the Chinese communists were
true: the U. S. Armed Forces had employed germ warfare in

MS

Four Years in a Red Hell

Korea. He based his conclusion in part on the coifroborative
testimony of many Chinese ministers of religion whom he had
interviewed in communist China on this matter and who con
curred with the communist government in accusing the
Americans of germ warfare.

This foreigner demonstrated his unreliableness when he
accepted the testimony of the Chinese ministers who were not
free to question the communist papers, to frankly express their
sincere opinions, to say otherwise than they actually did.

I considered the doings of this individual clergyman
shameful.

Later, an international scientific commission came to China
and Korea and investigated the germ warfare case. They con
cluded that the IL S. Armed Forces had employed germ
warfare.

This conclusion and further confessions of American flyers
shot down by the communists in Korea led me to believe that
the Americans had conducted a test of germ bombs*

I suffered much persecution over this case, since I refused
to believe that the Americans were conducting full scale germ
warfare.

Then, I was declared to be the source of all the vermin:
lice, fleas, etc., of the cells in which I was imprisoned, and
treated accordingly by many cell-mates. Some of these
scowled at me when they found vermin on their clothes or
bed rolls. Others shunned me as particularly infested with
lice or were very loud in their demands that I inspect my
clothes for lice.

When I read in a communist English publication an accusa
tion that the U. S. Government had "shamelessly endeavored
to hide their crimes" against humanity by denying that the
American Armed Forces in Korea had ever resorted to germ
warfare, I was delighted and accepted this statement of
Washington as true.

146

Germ Warfare

The communists then published confessions of some 21
American flyers, in which it was stated that they had dropped
germ bombs.

These confessions agreed on some important points. But
this did not convince me since I knew the dirty tactics of the
Chinese communists that resort not only to tortures and
cajolery to force or induce prisoners to confess what they
suggest or demand them to confess but actually change, delete
or insert parts of a text of a confession to suit their plans.

I could not believe that these flyers were traitors or cowards.

I had served as a chaplain in the U. S, Army Air Force in the
Second World War and knew that combat flyers are not
traitors or cowards.

The U, S. Marines certainly have demonstrated outstanding
valor and loyalty, and Marine Officers command my highest
respect.

"These flyers, Air Force and Marine, are not cowards," I
thought. "If they have made false confessions, something
happened to them. They were tricked, or tortured by subtle,
refined tortures, quite new even in the world of perversion
and cruelty, until they were no longer their old selves and
confessed."

The communist papers claimed that these flyers were to
be court-martialed on their return to the U. S, A.

I hoped the American government would not punish these
airmen who had offered their lives in the service of their
country, and had failed to stand up against techniques they
had never known of or for which they had never been
prepared.

"If the American government punishes them," I thought,
"they will be playing into the hands of the contemptible,
fiendish communists who are trying to break the morale of
the flyers, and to frighten the American youth from enlisting
in the Air Force/*

147

tour Years in a Red Hell

On my arrival in Hong Kong, I learned that the U. S. Armed
Forces had set up training centers to prepare cadet airmen
to face the cunning Chinese communist prison and court pro
cedures.

I was pleased to learn of this.

Some Americans, shall I call them blind sentimentalists or
communist sympathizers, were shocked at the so-called
brutality of such a training.

Do such people, sitting so cozily in their comfortable
parlours, realize what threatens their liberties?

Do they oppose giving our brave youth who fight our battles
all the protection and training we can?

Do they realize that communism employs new weapons,
psychological weapons, and we must prepare our armed
forces to withstand them?

, They reply, "But if we train our youth to resist such and
such techniques, our training is useless because the Reds will
learn about it and change their techniques,"

To this I say, "Why do the Reds learn of this? Who has in
formed the Reds one way or the other? How can such indi
viduals be controlled?" The problem then shifts to one of
security.

Something new happened in the East Court of Ts'ao Lan
Tzu, in the early spring of 1954.

All the prisoners were called out one morning and informed
of the new exercise program, in which all, who were able, were
to participate. As far as I remember, there were about one
hundred prisoners in that court when the exercise program
was initiated. Later, by June, the number had dropped to
about 50.

Every morning we gathered in the courtyard for group
running followed by calisthenics that together lasted about
twenty minutes.

Previous to this the only exercise was two daily trips to the

148

Germ Warfare

latrine of the courtyard, or a trip to the court of the judge.

The rest of the twenty four hours were spent in unsunned,
damp cells.

Rheumatism was common. I suffered from pains in my joints
which I think were due either to rheumatism or vitamin de
ficiencies or both.

Because of the stiffness of my joints and the rheumatic-like
pains I suffered, the running exercise, done in formation style
to the speed of the leader, as well as the calisthenics, were
painful.

Since these physical exertions were painful, I performed
them in a clumsy or imperfect manner, which invited perse
cution.

I was cursed by the leader, a young squirt of a prisoner,
for not performing the calisthenics to his liking. The cell
mates, especially Julian, often created great scenes, because I
was too slow, or stiff in the bending exercise.

Frequently, in the cell I was obliged to practice the calis
thenics under the supervision of the cell-mates.

Consequently even physical exercises were made occasions
of persecutions, mild in themselves, but many of these mild
persecutions in their accumulative effect, over a long space
of time, became grave, serious and big.

-

32

A Long Sentence in the Making

THE SPRING of 1954 came and with it renewed hopes that the
Kind Master, Whom I served the best I could, at the interces
sion of His Blessed Mother and His Foster Father would give
me more strength to unite closer with Him in carrying His
cross and doing His holy will, and perhaps even obtain my
release.

From the beginning of my imprisonment I told Our Blessed
Lord that I could no longer be united with Him as a priest
since the communists forbade and rendered me unable to
celebrate the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. I then told Him I
could only be united with Him as a victim, but prayed for the
grace to be a better victim.

In the early months of my imprisonment I prayed earnestly
for my release. As time went on, I prayed more for strength
to bear up, to become more and more Christ-like, and less
for my release.

Around the end of May, I was moved back to the West com
pound to section A or the southern section.

It was a relief to get away from the cell where Teng and
his two successors, who were not much better, had held sway.

Soon after my transfer to the West compound, I was called
to court. My regular judge presided. He asked me how I was
getting on, how I spent the past year, what I had been think
ing about and the like.

I do not remember what I told him beyond the fact that
I had been admitted to the study group around the proceeding

150

A Long Sentence in the Making

April but could not follow the discussions or readings from
the paper because of my ignorance of Chinese,

"To what U. S. government organization do you belong?"
he said.

"I belong to no U. S. government organization/' I said, not
a little surprised with this question. "I thought/' I continued,
"I had made this clear bef ore."

He questioned me further on this point but I remained
firm.

"How does the U. S. government control the American
S.V.D. (Divine Word Missionaries)?" he said.

"The U. S. government does not control the American
S.V.D."

"It does and we know all about it. I am asking you only to
see how honest you are/*

"It is 36 years since I joined the American S.V.D. and I
have always been in close contact with them. I know nothing
of the U. S. government controlling them. Moreover, I per
sonally do not believe that the U. S. government controls the
American S.V.D.'*

"You want to sacrifice yourself for the American S.V.D.?
You are willing to suffer for them? Alright, go ahead, you
will suffer plenty for them.

"You have been in the S.V.D. so long and in America so
long that you are unable to expose these two. You wifl pay
for this.

"Did you ever hear of the U. S. Marine, Colonel Sdbwable?**

"Yes," I replied.

"Did you hear or read that he made important exposures
of the U. S. Armed Forces, in Korea?"

"I have read about this in English publications of the
'People's' government."

"Now, Rigney, if you would make similarly big exposures
of the U. S. government's control of the American S.V.D.,
you would receive a big reduction in your sentence. The Teo-

Four ^ears in a Red Hett

pie's' government will not shoot or electrocute you as the
cruel American government electrocutes spies as they mur
dered the innocent Rosenbergs, but the 'People's' govern
ment will give you a long sentence. It is up to you to help your
self by helping the government and winning a reduction in
your sentence."

"I have told you the truth, I know of no U. S. control of the
American S.V.D. To say otherwise would be confessing falsely
and I have had enough of that. I will not make a false
confession.

"What!" he roared as he pounded his desk, "Are you threat
ening the 'People's' government?"

"No, I am just telling the truth."

After this session, I felt relieved in one way since this was
the first time in three years that I was told by the court I
would not get shot. On the other hand I was depressed with
the prospects of a long, bitter prison sentence.

During this period I had several court sessions. In one of
them the judge waved a pile of papers in the air and said: "On
the evidence presented by Mark (whom he named, and I
knew) the 'People's' government can give you a life sentence."

I stood motionless and made no reply.

"Look, here is Mark's signature!" and he presented the
confession so I could see the signature made below the con
fession done in Chinese.

This is one good confession Mark made/' the judge said.

As I knew Mark, I was sure he had been cajoled or forced
into some melodramatic and false confession about me, as I
later told the chu chang so he could report to the court my
reactions to this.

The judge also told me in those days, "If you do not confess
about the U. S. government control of the American S.V.D.,
your case will not be reviewed every year as in the past but
only every three years."

152

A Long Sentence in the Making

This meant that I could have an opportunity to win a court
reduction in sentence only every three years. This was not
good news.

The judge also maintained that the U. S. government con
trolled the Roman S.V.D. and the Catholic Church.

I denied both of these.

Later he said that if the Roman S.V.D, and the Catholic
Church follow the same policy towards communism as the
American government does, then the American government
controls them.

"If that is what you call control," I said, "then the U. S. gov
ernment does control them."

He then pressed me to state facts to support this, but I
gave none in spite of this pressing, shouting and pounding on
his desk. Consequently my bare agreement unsupported by
plausible facts meant nothing. The absence of facts removed
the grounds to support the admission of control.

My confession of July 1953, was given me to rewrite, re
ducing it to about fifteen pages. This impressed me as a good
sign and in spite of all the judge had threatened about a life
or long sentence, I thought that perhaps this was a prepara
tion to release me. I rewrote it several times, finally producing
a 2O-page confession. The judge made substantial changes,
adding, deleting or changing words. Thus I had written that
a Divine Word priest friend of mine could have known an
F.B.I, agent among his many friends and acquaintances. The
judge changed the "could have known an F.B.I, agent" to
"had known an F.B.I, agent."

I wrote, "as rector of Fu Jen, I gave intelligence 3 * He .
changed this to "under the cloak of a priest I gave intelligence
" I objected to this change but the judge stated that "when
a priest gives intelligence, he gives it under the cloak of a

153

Four l^ears in a Red Hett

priest." On the basis of this explanation I let it go, hoping to
be released to explain or correct all these distorted statements
if they were ever published.

One day I was called to the court and told I would have
to record my confession on a wire recorder. To hesitate, I
thought, would jeopardize my chance of getting released, so
I did not argue or hesitate. I also thought that the recording
was being made for presenting in a higher court.

Later, I thought the recording might be broadcasted over
Radio Peking, and the written confession published, while
I was held in prison where I could make no explanations. This
weighed on me for about a year.

'33

Letters From Home

IN THE NEW CELL, however, the same brain-washing and press
ing prisoners to confess and accuse others continued.

Many Catholics, including priests and brothers were ar
rested that summer o 1954. They were dealt with harsher
than the other prisoners. I remember one brother, who was
cruelly beaten by the acting chu chang, Judas, a "progressive
Catholic/' who was a tall, well built six-footer. The brother,
a brave and stouthearted Chinese, took these tortures with
outstanding fortitude. Several times Judas, in a fit of uncon
trollable rage, seized the chain of the brother's fetters and
with all his might, jerked them up and down: the sharp edges
of the rusty iron fetter bands dealt painful blows on the sensi
tive bones of the shins and feet, causing bruises and drawing
blood.

The brother in agony stretched out his legs, clinched his
jaws, bearing the pain.

On one occasion, I seized the arm of Judas crying, "Stop,
you will break his bones. You are not allowed to beat prison
ers." He stopped but what he reported about me to the prison
officer, I never heard. It undoubtedly contributed to my fur
ther detention and sentence in prison, while most of the other
foreign priests were released in the spring and summer of that
year of 1954. Such actions as I had done were dangerous and
usually brought punishment for both the doer and the one
protected or defended.

In 1952, beating of prisoners was forbidden by the prison,

155

Four years in a Red Hell

but It seemed the officials granted many exceptions since
this brother was beaten many times. On one occasion, Judas
stamped on the brother's feet so hard that I thought he broke
the bones of the poor brother's foot arch,

Judas defended the Ke Hsing Huei (pro-Communist Ref
ormation Committee consisting of a few renegade Catholics
collaborating with the Red government) of the Pei Tang
(North Church or Cathedral) of Peking and tried without
success to induce the brother to support it.

Later a prisoner, Brutus, came to our cell to conduct the
tou cheng-ing and breaking down of the brother. On several
occasions Brutus beat up the brother, dealing him hard blows
in the face. The other cell-mates, excepting me, joined in the
beating. Judas told them if they did not beat the brother, they
were not on the side of the communist government.

To stand by and witness such brutality and tou cheng-ing
hour after hour, day after day, dealt out to a helpless prisoner,
was always a mental torture for me. And I witnessed such for
over four years.

Judas was accustomed to hum Catholic hymns and parts
of a mass in my hearing. I showed no reaction. Judas had
shown his colors and I was on my guard against his provoca
tions.

Had I joined his humming, or led off on a religious discus
sion, he could, and certainly would, have immediately re
ported me as spreading subversive propaganda, trying by
means of religious appeals to wean "progressive Catholics"
from the bosom of the government, etc.

Shortly after, the brother was moved to another cell and a
young Chinese priest was brought in.

Judas and the other cell-mates pressed him as they had
pressed the brother to support the Ke Hsing Huei.

To strengthen this brave young priest and to clarify before
the "People's" government my stand, I asked a prisoner to

Letters From Home

translate for me to this young priest. "Is the Ke Hsing Huei
united to the Bishop of Rome., the Pope?" I asked.

"No."

"Then since the government guarantees freedom of religion
in China, we Catholics are free to support or not support the
Ke Hsing Huei. To support the Ke Hsing Huei would be sep
arating from communion with the Pope and this would be
denying our Catholic religion since union with the Pope is
essential to Catholicism. Therefore, we Catholics are not
bound to support the Ke Hsing Huei. For my part, I do not
support the Ke Hsing Huei. I am a Catholic and am resolved
to remain a Catholic. If I supported this committee, I would
be changing my religion. The government declares I am free
to select my religion, and I choose to be and remain a
Catholic."

A few days after this, I was sentenced.

In mid September, 1954, 1 was given five letters, air mailed
from the States in June, that had been sent by my brother
and four sisters through the Chinese Red Cross. These were
*the first letters I had received from my relatives since my
arrest in July, 1951. I was simply delighted with them and
read them over and over. I kept them in a convenient place
so I could get to them. I would have read them more fre
quently but feared that such would only draw the wrath of
the cell-mates and officers for showing too much interest in
family affairs instead of the "great absorbing" questions of
communism, marxism, socialism, the socialization of China.

The judge gave me permission to answer these letters which
I did, writing about the family and friends, with one sentence
about myself: "My health is good and I am well cared for."
To write about being in prison, or prison experiences or life
in China would have been criminal and punished and I would
BOt degrade myself by obsequiously extolling the "People's"

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Four Years in a Red Hell

China, although such would have pleased the communists
and won favors from them.

I also had asked the judge for permission to write to my
relatives for some money since I had only 56,000 Jen Min
Chuan or equivalent to about $2.80 in U. S. money. I feared
too that if war were declared between the U. S. and commu
nist China, I would be in a tough position with no money to
purchase shou chih ( toilet paper ) , soap and the like. Then my
teeth were in very poor shape. I suffered daily from them. "If
I had more money," I thought, "I could perhaps get proper
dental treatment." Moreover, I did not know how long I would
be in prison.

The judge granted this request and I wrote asking my
brother the Rev. Dr. J. Francis Rigney, Professor of History
at San Diego University, for a little money.

158

34-

Sentenced

"You ARE sentenced to ten years of imprisonment/' the in
terpreter said for the judge.

On September 21, 1954, the officer made me pack my be
longings. Coming at this time, I thought I might be released.

I was nervous as I packed.

The guard then led me to a side room where I was told to
open all my bundles for inspection.

I was not nervous, I was excited.

"At last," I thought, "I am going to be released."

I began to plan what I would do after my release.

I would cafi on the good S. Sp. S. (Holy Ghost Missionary
Sisters) and thank them from the bottom of my heart for all
they had done for me, in prison.

They lived near the prison, about one English mile, or a little
over one and one-half kilometers, at Nan Wei Hutung San
Hao, (Nan Wei Lane, No. 3) Tai Ping Ts'ang.

I would inquire from them whether there were any of my
confreres, Divine Word Missionaries, left in Peking and if
so where they lived.

I pictured my meeting with these confreres. There was
so much to ask them. How they were? Had any been arrested?
Had any been deported?

My first mass after being released! How I longed for this!
I had dreamed so often of celebrating mass. Now it was soon
to be a reality but I was not entirely sure.

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Four Years in a Red Hell

After this inspection, in which all my notes made in my
efforts to learn Chinese, were destroyed, I was led by an officer
to a room in a courtyard west of the court rooms in which I had
had most of my sessions. Before entering this room I met my
usual interpreter. She said, "You are going to receive your
sentence."

At this I was more nervous.

I expected to be released by court order. "Perhaps," I
thought, "I will first be sentenced, then a second order will be
pronounced reducing my term to the time already spent in
prison. This would entail my immediate release or discharge/'

I entered the court room with the interpreter. The judge
was waiting. We three were the only ones in the room.

"You are now to be sentenced," the interpreter said.

I stood at attention, while the judge, whom I could not re
member ever having seen before, read my sentence. He read
only one document.

The interpreter followed, giving me an interpretation.

As far as I can remember the sentence stated that I had
been sent to China by the U. S. government to take over Ger
man influence in China; collected and reported economic,
military, political, educational, and social intelligence to the
U. S. consulate and U. S. espionage agencies as well as to other
imperialistic consulates and embassies and negotiating mis
sions, such as the British, Dutch, Belgium, French and Italian,
before and after "liberation"; opposed and sabotaged the pro
gressive movement in China, as well as the reformation of Fu
Jen University and the religious reformation policy of the
"People's" government.

"For these crimes," the interpreter concluded, "you are sen
tenced to ten years imprisonment."

I was shocked indeed!

I was not released but on the contrary, sentenced to ten
long years.

160

Sentenced

"Still It could have been worse, 15, 20, or more years/' I
thought.

"Do you have anything to say?" the judge asked.

"I have nothing to say/' I said.

For a year or so I had prepared this statement, should I be
given a long sentence. I had resolved not to fall on my knees
admitting my "crimes/* thanking the generous "People's" gov
ernment and begging mercy.

The judge seemed a little upset by this noncommittal
answer.

"But you are a spy, are you not?"

At this, I thought that I would have to continue admitting
that I was a spy according to the communist definition. To
do otherwise would only bring me into more trouble.

"Yes," I replied.

"I am going to send you to a prison factory where you can
work out your reformation by labor. I want you to work well."

"I will do my best."

The judge did not tell me when the sentence began. I was
of the opinion, which was later verified, that it, began on the
day of my arrest, 25th of July, 1951, and would last until
July 25th, 1961.

In bewilderment, I left the court room to find the prison
officers opening my bundles again for the second search.
More articles were lost, destroyed or confiscated.

The interpreter returned the articles taken from me on the
day of my arrest. The watch and automatic pencil were
damaged. They had been crushed while being kept by the
prison authorities. No apology was offered. No effort was made
to repair these articles damaged as a result of the neglect or
carelessness of the officials.

I did not complain. "What is this compared to all we S.V JD.
fathers have so far lost Fu Jen University, S.V.D. properties,
including the seminary; to mention only two?" I thought After

161

Four Years in a Red Hett

this I was ordered into a jeep an American jeep and my right
wrist, handcuffed to that of another prisoner, a Japanese, who
was being taken with me.

We then drove down to the southwest corner of the southern
or Chinese city to the Jen Min Fa Yuan Chien Yu, Hsuan Men
Wei, Tzu Hsing Lu, (The People's Court Prison, outside
Hsuan gate, Tzu Hsing street. )

The drive was about four English miles or six and a half
kilometers.

This was my first time outside the walls of Ts'ao Lan Tzu
since my arrest on July 25, 1951, a space of three years and two
months.

I was most impressed by the somber, depressed expressions
on the faces of the people of all ages and both sexes, that I
saw on this journey.

*These are not the 'Peking' people I knew," I thought, "They
are habitually gay or smiling. Now they look so sober. I under
stand. They are under the cloud of communism. The red star
of Mao Tse-tung was an illusion. It turned out to be a cloud."

These faces told me more than books could about the real
effect of communism on the Peking people.
We arrived at the prison. There were high walls, with higher
towers manned by armed guards at the corners. The walls
were newly built. The communists had enlarged the Kuo-
mingtang prison to meet the demand for more prison space.
Everywhere, in the Peking area, inside and outside the walled
cities, are new prisons. Many are requisitioned or confiscated
residences. The Chinese police state is a Chinese prison state.
And yet the Chinese are forced to sing songs that China was
never so free!

I was in the prison factory, on Tzu Hsing Lu, under a ten
year prison sentence.

162

35-

A Match Box Maker

NEAR THE entrance of the prison factory on Tzu Hsing Lu, my
bundles were again laid open and examined for the third time.
A few more articles of mine were lost. The wind blew away
much of my valuable shou chih (toilet paper). The officials
took in keeping my penknife, the little money I had left which
was about 56,000 Jen Ming Chuan or equivalent to about $2.80
La U. S. money.

This was the remnant of the 400,000 Jen Ming Chuan I had
on me when arrested plus the 1,000,000 J.M.C. found in my
living quarters at Li Kwang Chiao Nan Chieh, I Hao (Fu
Jen) when the Sepo searched those quarters after my arrest.

Each Divine Word Missionary at Fu Jen had been issued
1,000,000 Jen Ming Chuan, equivalent to a little less than
$50.00 U. S. money. We were to keep this money for an emer
gency, as arrest

The officials did not take my rosary which I prized as my
most valuable belonging. It had been given to me by my for
mer superior, Most Reverend Adolph A. Noser, S.V.D., the
former Bishop of Accra, Gold Coast, British West Africa, and
present Bishop of Alexishaven, New Guinea. I valued this
rosary especially as a memory of this self sacrificing bishop,
whose spirituality has ever been a model to me.

After tin's searching and registration at the entrance, we
prisoners were ordered to carry our bundles to the top floor of
the three storied building, recently built by the communists.

163

Four Years in a Red Hell

Here my bundles were searched for the fourth time, with
more losses.

After the usual confusion of the Chinese communists, I was
ordered down to the second floor to Section i, Ward i, where
my bundles were again hastily opened and their diminishing
contents thrown over the dirty floor of the prison for another
and fifth search. This time I lost my Chinese shoes, and face
rag. Many other articles lost for the time being were recov
ered months later, in the heaps of held-over belongings of
prisoners.

My rosary was taken away, as well as the few photos of
some of my relatives which I had received a few days previous
in the letters finally allowed to be sent me by my relatives
through the Chinese Red Cross.

After this inspection, I was assigned to Cell No. i. The
number of my living quarter was Section No. i, Ward No. i,
Cell No. i, or 111.

There were 25 prisoners in cell 111. There were eight cells
in this ward, and each cell held about 25 prisoners, making an
average of about 200 in the ward.

The cell was about 16 feet wide, to the right and left of the
door, and about 12 feet deep. Opposite the door were two large
windows each about 3 feet wide and six feet high. On either
side of the 4-foot aisle were wooden kangs or beds about 12
feet by 6 feet. There was a single 15 candle power electric
light in the center of the ceiling.

The kangs were used for sleeping, for eating, for studying
and for working. The movable boards were taken up after a
night's rest and arranged to serve as benches for factory work
and then rearranged to serve as dinner tables. In study periods,
the dinner, or night arrangement of the kangs was used.

Twice a day, about 15 to 30 minutes after rising and in the
afternoon about 4 o'clock, all the prisoners of the ward left
their cells, formed a double line in the corridor, and filed
down to the latrine.

164

A Match Box Maker

There was a toilet in each ward that was far too small and
so poorly built and equipped that flushing had to be supple
mented by buckets of water, hand drawn and poured. This
toilet could be visited for urination with permission of the cell
leader or pen chang, and in emergencies for a bowel move
ment after asking permission from your own pen chang and
usually a second pen chang in charge of the latrine permis
sions.

We ate three times a day. The meals were little better than
at Ts'ao Lan Tzu. The wo tou and pai tsai were often supple
mented by hsien tsai (or salted vegetable). In the autumn
and early winter we received rice once a week. After Chinese
New Year, in mid winter, we received rice only once a month.
With rice went a soup with meat, usually 4 or 6 pieces of meat,
the size and twice the thickness of an American quarter of a
dollar.

The cell had two pen changs, or cell leaders, the head or
first pen chang and the assistant or second.

It was difficult for me to adjust myself to the crowded con
ditions of the cell. We were always crowded. At night 8 or 9
slept on each kang, 4 slept in the aisle, at times one or two
slept on boards placed each night from kang to kang at the
window end of the aisle. The rest slept in the corridor. At
meals, work, brainwashing and "recreation" all the inmates
were corralled in this cell.

Movement about in the cell at all times, night or day, was
difficult

The head pen chang, Chu, was quite decent towards me,
at first. A day or so later, apparently after he received instruc
tions, he was a genuine "running dog" of his communist mas
ters, I was one of the cell-mates who suffered under his con
stant persecution. I was suffering from rheumatic-like pains
from Ate damp, under-heated cells, as well as I think, from de
ficiency in vitamins. Consequently it was painful for me to
move fast But Chu, every time he saw me, roared, "Rui Ko

165

Four Years in a Red Hell

Ni! Kuai! Kuai! (Rigney, hurry! hurry!)" He lost no oppor
tunity to persecute me on other grounds.

There was an activist in the cell, a sort of third pen ehang,
who peered out through thick lensed spectacles. He reminded
me, on first sight, of one of the depraved characters in a novel
of Dickens and he subsequently lived up to this in his persecu
tion of unprogressive cell-mates including myself.

This was a match box factory.

I became a match box maker.

My specialty was to assemble the rims of the tray part of
the match box. I received a strip of paper with a flat strip of
thin wood pasted on it. These had to be folded into a tray
with the paper folded over the edges. This was then thrown to
another worker who pasted a bottom on it.

This was light factory work, but all workers were obliged
to work faster and faster.

In my specialty 2,000 trays a day were expected, 3,000
were considered fast, 4,000 and above, very fast.

I attained a record for myself of 4,200 in the end of April
1955. This was very fast but others were even faster.

The Chinese are experts at such work and seem to delight
in it. They are experts at precision work and I often thought
that if the Chinese ever turn to the manufacturing of watches,
cameras, miscroscopes and the like, they will excel all pro
ducers of such precision instruments in the West.

166

36

My Last Friends: Chinese Holy
Ghost Missionary Sisters

I NEEDED some supplies as aprons, winter bedding, winter
clothing, soap, a small stool to be used at work and to sit on
at the many brainwashing talks and stage performances we
were obliged to attend.

I asked for permission to write to the S. Sp. S. sisters who
had so generously sent me supplies before. After about three
weeks I was finally informed I could write to the sisters for
what I needed in the line of supplies, but food was excepted.

Chu wrote a card to the sisters for me in Chinese, request
ing the supplies I needed. I also asked them for a little money
if they had it and could spare it. The request was made be
cause I did not know if my brother in the U.S.A., whom I
had requested for money, would be allowed to send me any.

In about two weeks more, the good Holy Ghost Missionary
Sisters sent me my requested supplies, as well as 100,000 Jen
Ming Chuan equivalent to about four U. S. dollars. All this,
including the money, was a great help. With the money, I
could purchase a little extra food each week, as eggs, sugar
and occasionally a little wheat bread.

These good sisters, without my asking them, sent me the
same amount of money on three subsequent occasions.

In prison, I thought that the "People's" government must
allow them to receive money from my society for me through
Switzerland. Later in September, 1955, on reaching Hong

167

Four Years in a Red Hell

Kong, I learned that no money was sent them from outside
China, that these good Chinese sisters worked with their own
hands to earn money to supply me with the needs I had in
prison! They also supplied other prisoners! When I learned
this, I was deeply moved and have not yet found words to
express my esteem and gratitude to them.

Chu, the pen chang, improved his attitude and behavior
towards me around the beginning of December. I took this
as a good sign. I had developed the idea by this time that a
prisoner could gauge his standing with the government by the
way the cell leader treated him. Hence, when Chu began to
be decent, I thought that the government was becoming
favorably disposed towards me.

About this time, in the beginning of December 1954, 1 was
called with Monsignor Martina and a Japanese, into one of
the offices of the prison and asked to fill out a biographical
statement. I thought that perhaps this was a step towards
my release, Christmas was coming and the communists often
release prisoners just before an important day. I thought that
I might be released before this feast. As a matter of fact, Mon
signor Martina was released within a couple of weeks and
the Japanese was not to be seen about the time Monsignor
Martina disappeared from the prison. But I was not released.

When I was not released by Christmas and Chu began to
be nasty towards me again, in January 1955, 1 concluded that
my standing with the government had deteriorated.

Throughout my stay in the prison factory, I suffered from
frequent, severe head and chest colds, frequent attacks of
diarrhea, toothaches and rheumatism. The colds were due,
I think, to the under-heated, damp, cells. The diarrhea I
traced to the unsanitary policy of using only cold water, with
no soap to wash our pai tsai bowls and chop sticks, both of
which were used promiscuously. My teeth had been bothering

168

My Last Friends

me since the spring of 1952. My gums were swollen and pain
ful, a beriberi condition due to vitamin deficiency. The rheu
matic-like pains were due, I think, to the cold, damp cells and,
I think, to vitamin deficiency.

I often went to the prison physicians. This was quite an
experience. A sick prisoner notified the pen chang who in
turn notified the medical officer through a special pen chang.
In the late morning, the names of all the sick applicants were
shouted in the corridor. The sick then lined up and were
marched upstairs to a big open room where four physicians
sat at a table. The sick were queued up by shouting pen
ehangs, for each doctor. There was no privacy* There were
no adequate consultations. In my case with my poor Chinese,
it was impossible to explain my complaints. The doctors, all
prisoners, did the best they could in the limited time at their
disposal and the wretched clinical conditions. Their medica
ment supplies were evidently insufficient.

Later, in the spring, the physicians held consultations in
cells set aside and equipped for clinical work, but even here
there was little privacy and little time for proper consultation.

All the prisoners were vaccinated and received anti-typhoid
injections in good order, considering the large number of
prisoners, some 4,000 or 5,000 in all, as I estimated them at
full indoctrination gatherings.

In February, I was called into the pai changes or warden's
office. The warden showed me a box of food and medicine
my brother had sent me through the International Red Cross
of Geneva, Switzerland. This left Geneva on January 7, 1955.

I had to itemize all the articles of the box and sign that I
had received them. Then they were all taken away, to be kept
for me.

In April, I was very sick with diarrhea, nausea and a severe
chest cold. Several times I felt like vomiting. At last in the

169

Four Years in a Red Hell

evening, I could stand the nausea no longer and asked for
permission to go to the latrine. Here I vomited first food, then
a quantity, a half a pint or more, of blood. The blood shocked
me.

On returning to my cell, I sat quietly and tried to explain
the blood. I ruled out a lung hemorrhage because I had noticed
no blood in my sputum. I thought that most probably it was
due to a stomach ulcer or infection, as dysentery.

I reported this vomiting of blood to the pen chang and had
a consultation with a physician the next morning. The doctor
examined my chest with a stethoscope and then prescribed
tablets to be taken every four hours for 24 hours. I think the
tablets were sulfa drugs. They made me sick. I was also ex
cused from work and allowed to sit up in the cell but not per
mitted to lie down although I felt very sick. Special food-
rice was given me for a few days but I had no appetite and ate
very little. I was not troubled any more with vomiting of
blood.

I wrote a request to the prison authorities, asking them
to give me the food and medicine package my brother had
sent me, since it contained ovalmaltine, which I could use
to the benefit of my health. My request passed unheeded!

170

37

The Skies are the Same

"How LOVELY are the skies," I thought, as we filed out of the
prison factory building at dawn, into the open ground, which
was some 300 feet square, on our way to the latrine.

It was so restful to raise my head and look up into the clear,
blue skies of Peking.

The sordid prison was so different from the free world that
I had known in China, in America, in Europe and in Africa!
The cruel, devilish communists who built the sordid prison
and tortured all in China to force them to accept an unnatural
system of Godlessness was so different from the rest of the
world where the deepest, most ardent aspirations of man
found expression!

The damnable, cruel prison with its subtle and brutal tor
tures, its hypocritical, fiendish, inhuman communist authori
ties was so different from the rest of the cultured, Christian
world that I knew!

But the skies, the beautiful, blue skies were the same in or
out of Tzu Hsing Lu Prison!

To raise my head and look at the skies, the boundless ex
panse of space, lifted nie above the duplicity and injustice of
communist China into a realm that Mao Tse-tung and Chou
En-lai and the rest of the communist gangsters knew nothing
about.

"Our Blessed Lord ascended into those skies, Constantine
the Great saw a Cross with the words : In hoc signo vinces. ( In
this sign thou shalt conquer)' in them," I often thought, "and
somewhere beyond are the eternal realms of heaven, where

171

Four Jears in a Red Hell

as the Blessed Paul wrote we shall see God not as 'now
through a mirror in an obscure manner, but then face to face
(I Cor. XIII, 12) / and again 'Eye has not seen, nor ear heard,
neither hath it entered into the heart of man, what things
God hath prepared for them that love Him. (I Cor. II, g)/ "

And at night when we were forced to attend those cheap,
Chinese communist propaganda or half-baked Russian films,
it was a relief to look above the wretched cinema screen to
the star spangled heavens!

The stars were the same in Tzu Hsing Lu as in the free
world!

I recognized the constellations Orion, Cygnus, the brilliant
Pleiades, Ursa Major or the Big Dipper, Ursa Minor with its
North Star, and the like, that I had known from boyhood.
They were the same beautiful groups of stars that I had
learned to know over forty years ago in Chicago, on the other
side of the earth.

Yes, the communists may come and go, but the stars remain
forever!

There were other scenes I remember from those open
grounds the poor wretch of a blind prisoner, with his empty
eye sockets, in handcuffs and fetters.

I often wondered, what on earth could he have done of a
criminal nature!

I remember the aged, the crippled, the lame, wobbling out
to the latrine! One day I counted 15 crippled prisoners out of a
line of 150. That was 10%. I thought the communists must
have a special hatred for the aged, the infirm, the disabled, the
crippled, the blind.

These unfortunates are unproductive and therefore have
little welcome in a marxist set up.

I had always considered slave labor as the cheapest of labor.
I had read about slaves and their kbor in the U.S A. before the

172

The Skies are the Same

American Civil War. I had seen slaves working in the Arabian
and Moorish world of North Africa, especially in the Sahara
Desert of Mauritania, French Africa.

But in communist China I discovered that there is one type
of labor lower, cheaper than slave labor and that is communist
Chinese prison labor.

A slave is fed and clothed by his master.

Not so the average laborer in the dank prison factory of
communist China.

The prisoners, with exceptions, in the prison factories of the
quisling Mao Tse-tung, are clothed, and partly fed by their
relatives.

The shameless Chinese communists do not even clothe,
properly feed, provide bedding, toilet paper, or soap for most
of their countless millions of prisoners, most of whom are
thrown into prison on trumped-up, unjust charges.

These prisoners are cruelly and unjustly forced to serve long
sentences of 5, 10, 15, 20, 30 years or life, during which they
labor in state prison factories, producing match boxes, bricks,
thread, cloth, etc., or on state farms.

The police state of communist China is largely based on
the economy of the prison state an economy lower than slave
economy!

173

38-

4,200 Match Boxes in One Day

AROUND the beginning of April 1955, 1 was changed from Cell
No. i to No. 3. My prison residence was 113, Section No. i,
Ward No. i, Cell No. 3.

In this new cell, I was treated as never before. The pen
chang or cell leader was the most considerate I had ever had.
The assistant pen chang was likewise considerate and decent.
The rest of the cell-mates, following the lead of the two pen
changs, were also considerate. They did not treat me as weU as
they treated their Chinese fellow prisoners. This was to be
expected. After all, I was an American, a Catholic priest. If
Chinese prisoners in the communist prison of Tzu Hsing Lu
would have treated me as well as they treated Chinese prison
ers, they would have been inviting punishment from the com
munists. But the cell-mates treated me better than any other
group of cell-mates I had ever had.

Moreover, I was given better working facilities.

Often I noticed that certain prisoners, who were actually
fast and efficient or else were advanced in their progressive
thinking, were given better facilities to work than other
prisoners. They were appointed to work in places where there
was relatively good light; where they had more room, elbow
room, to enable them to work fast; they were provided with
ample supplies and were given fast follow-up workers, who
kept their products from accumulating to the point of piling
up and being in the way.

I was given better working facilities.

174

4200 Match Boxes in One Day

"Well! well!" I thought, "these are good indications! The
pen changs are decent, the cell-mates are decent, facilities
for work have improved for me. These are good signs. The
wind is blowing in the right direction. Whither it will blow
me, is uncertain. So often in the past my hopes for release or
deportation were raised only to meet with disappointment.
These are improvements that indicate a more favourable at
titude of the government towards me. Perhaps the government
is considering or preparing to release or deport me. I must
do my part so they can release me without losing face. They
would not release me if they lost face in doing so. I have not
and will not become communistic or "progressive" in my
thinking, hence, there is only one way for me to help myself
and that is by working well."

When the pen chang asked me in those days what I was
thinking about, I told him, "I do not understand the newspaper
or discussion classes," and I then added as emphatically as I
could in my best Chinese embellished by pantomime, *I am
working as well as I can and I want to improve my work to turn
out more match boxes and better match boxes in order to
have my sentence cut in half." The end of this statement was
elucidated by cutting the air with my right hand, below my
uplifted left hand as though I were cutting a suspended
sausage by one blow.

Working under relatively favorable labor conditions and
employing a technique I had hit upon around March 21, my
output of match boxes increased.

A contest or movement to increase our production was
started around the beginning of April 1955. The chiefs of the
prison formally announced the contest to all the prisoners
gathered in the open grounds, sitting on their little stools or
bundles of clothes if they had either of these.

Two or three long speeches were given, lasting in all some
two hours.

I sat through all this, as I had sat through so many similar

175

Four Years in a Red Hett

kai huai or meetings as well as stage productions, not under
standing more than "Kai tsao! Kai tsao! Kai tsao! (Reform!
Reform! Reform!)" repeated umpteen times. I usually stead
ied my head in my hands, my elbows resting on my knees, and
if no officers were around or it was night, I would pull my cap
well over my forehead and go off to sleep. Sometimes an ac
tivist would give me a poke in the side to awake me.

The day after this kai huai, the warden officer called all the
inmates of our ward out to the corridor, where we had to
listen to his motivation talk, peppered with "Kai tsao! Kai
tsao! Kai tsao!" for up to an hour.

This was followed by a pep talk by the pen chang or cell
leader who gave us some more kai tsao.

Later a kai huai was held in the cell in which each prisoner
was obliged to pledge himself to increase his production and
state the amount he would do. Moreover, the daily hours of
work were increased from 8 to 8-and-a-half hours because
of the lengthening days.

I was able to turn out 2,500 boxes a day and pledged to in
crease this to 2,800. 1 was quite certain I could do more but
to pledge your maximum in the beginning of such a move
ment was bad tactics, I thought, since the movement would
last several weeks and each week you would be called upon
to pledge to increase your production over the last. It would
be better to reserve your maximum for the grand finale and
score credit for it, than reach it the first week and be unable
to improve upon it, giving the impression that you were not
interested in the movement.

So I reached my 2,800 target with merit.

This output was raised to 3,200, then 3,500, then to my
surprise to 3,800 and at last to 4,200 match boxes a day! These
increases won me commendations. To turn out 4,000 match
boxes a day was very fast. So I had made a name for myself. I
tried to increase this to 4,500, hoping eventually to reach
5,000, but I had reached my peak. I turned out 4,000 a few
times afterwards, but never my 4,200 again.

176

4200 Match Boxes in One Day

In the final report, the chu chang credited me with work
ing very well, for overshooting my pledged 2,800 by doing
4,2,00.

In the first year at Ts'ao Lan Tzu, from July 1951, to the
following summer of 1952, we prisoners had our hair cut and
beard clipped once every two months. We were never shaved.
This meant that a prisoner never looked respectable.

The barbers were fellow prisoners.

Later, our hair and beards were sheared every month.

In Tzu Hsing Lu, we received tonsorial attention every two
weeks, when our heads and beards were shaved or clipped.

Most prisoners, including me, chose to be shaven.

My head and face felt like a billiard ball, for one day out
of two weeks. Then in April 1955, 1 decided to grow a beard.

"Better a beard," I thought, "than going around with fuzz,
for 13 or 14 days out of each half month." Then I considered
I could experiment with a beard with little inconvenience.

Back in my days in the mission of Accra, Gold Coast, West
Africa, where I was Catholic chaplain and master at Achimota
College, I experimented with a small beard but without suc
cess.

After letting my full beard grow about two or three weeks
in Africa, I shaved my cheeks, leaving the fuzzy mustache, and
chin beard. I looked as though I had just dipped my head
into a big pot of jam there was a black circle around my
mouth, with a dot in the middle, on my lower lip.

I started to grow this beard at the beginning of the summer
vacation of Achimota. A month later at the end of the vaca
tion, I said mass at Achimota.

As I was in a hurry, I did something unwise: I failed to pre
pare or read over beforehand the gospel of that Sunday, which
was read before mass.

I noticed that the students were taken by surprise when
they saw me, but my embarrassment reached a climax when
I read the first sentence of the gospel: "And turning to his

177

Four Years in a Red Hell

disciples tie said, 'Blessed are the eyes that see what you see!
For I say to you, many prophets and kings have desired to
see what you see and they have not seen it. ( Luke X, 23, 24) /'
I returned to the mission and shaved off my fuzz.

The cell-mates, in Tzu Hsing Lu, urged me to shave off my
sprouting beard that grew in all directions. But I refused and
thought, "This is something you cannot do!"

39-

Back to Ts'ao Lan Tzu

ON JUNE 10, 1955, most of Ward No. i, I included^ were told
to pack up their belongings. We were lined up and inarched
out to the open grounds where our belongings were searched.

My photos, money and such articles as had been held back
by the ward officer, were returned.

"Are we going to be released or sent to the prison farm or
some other prison factory?" I thought.

Soon, whatever illusions I had of being released, were again
painfully destroyed.

We were marched past the road leading to the entrance
into the old part of the prison which had been built by the
Japanese. We stopped before a large, single-storied building
with five wings radiating in a semicircle from the central en
trance or hall.

I was assigned to a cell about 24 feet by 12 feet in which
some 33 prisoners were corralled.

We did not make match boxes. We studied (were brain
washed) about ten hours a day, and were told by the ward
officer that we would be assigned to a prison factory such as
the textile factory in this prison or to some other prison
factory.

"Who wants to buy garlic?" the pan chang asked one day.
Everyone who had money instantly raised his hand. I joined
the garlic rush.

"How much garlic do you want, Rui Ko-Ni?" the pan chang
asked.

179

Four Jears in a Red Hell

"How is it sold?"

"Quarter of a catty, half a catty, as much as you like/*

"Give me one catty (one pound)/' I said, thinking that I
had better get a good supply while it was possible. The op
portunity may not present itself again. I had seldom eaten
fresh garlic before but now I thought it would be a good condi
ment for the tasteless, heavy, unleavened wo tou. Most cell
mates were purchasing it, hence there could be no objection
to the consequent bad breaths of the garlic eaters. Never had
I bought these pungent, strong-scented bulbs before, and I
had only a faint idea of how bulky a pound of them would be.

No one else ordered as much as I had.

What a surprise I got a few days later when the garlic was
delivered to me. I counted 25 bulbs, each containing about 8
to 10 bulblets, giving a total of about 200 to 250 bulblets. At
the rate of 2. bulblets at each meal or 6 per day, my stock
would last about 35 to 40 days.

And so it did. The stock of my cell-mates was soon exhausted
and I found myself the only garlic eater in this cell and in the
subsequent cells to which I was moved.

Often I noticed envious glances from cell-mates who were
evidently garlic starved, or disturbed glances from those
whose olfactory nerves were normally developed.

"This is once/' I thought, "when I can get one over on the
cell-mates. I have suffered much at their hands; now they are
suffering from me." I calmly and cold bloodedly ate my garlic,
about six bulblets a day for about one month and a half. One
bite of wo tou and then a nibble of garlic, another bite of wo
tou and another nibble of garlic.

What an imperialist I still was after almost four years of re
education!

On June 17, 1955, seven prisoners, I included, from various
cells were told to pack up our bundles. Two of us were western
ers, five were mongoloids.

We were ordered back to the match box factory to the same

Sack to Tsao Lan Tzu

ward I had been in prior to June 10, 1955. 1 was settled in Cell
No. 2.

Chu was pen chang, and a different pen chang was he; quite
considerate towards me, the match box maker who had a
record of 4,200 boxes in a day.

Soon Chu asked me what I thought was the reason for re
turning me to my old building, to my old ward.

"I do not know," I said, "there were seven of us returned,
two foreigners and five Chinese."

"No, you were all foreigners, seven foreigners, two western
ers and five orientals/'

"Oh, is that so?"

"What do you make of that?"

"Perhaps there is a threat of war and the "People's* govern
ment is taking security measures and rounding up all foreign
ers to eventually gather them in a special prison."

I also thought that perhaps we foreigners were to be de
ported but dared not reveal this thought for fear the com
munist would take stringent measures to remove it.

So I was back at my trade; making match boxes, trying as I
told Chu to make as many match boxes and as good match
boxes as I could to cut my sentence in half, and I made my
usual stroke of my right hand through the air as though I were
cutting a sausage in half with one stroke.

Then on July 13, 1955, 1 was told to pack up my belongings.

"Take your time," Chu said, "and collect all your belongings
since you will find it difficult to recover anything left behind."

I was excited.

"I am going to be deported, most likely," I thought.

With my bundles prepared, I was led down to the entrance
of the prison where my bundles were opened and searched,
My money, pocket knife, etc., held at the entrance, were
handed over to an officer accompanying me, who, I thought,
would give me these articles on releasing me.

The food package iny brother had sent me, by air mail,

181

Four fears in a Red Hell

through the International Red Cross of Geneva on January 7,
*955> and a large food package from my relatives, were also
given to me.

*This is grand! I must be going to be released!" I thought.

Soon I was ordered in a jeep with my bundles.

Then I received a shock: the officer handcuffed me.

"My," I thought, "this is bad. Released prisoners are not
handcuffed. Perhaps," I thought, to keep my hopes up, "I am
going to a court to be released by court order and afterwards
my chains will be released. Or can it really be that I am going
to another prison, to the prison farm or to a special prison for
foreigners!" Such thoughts ran through my mind.

The jeep was driven out of the prison, north through the
Hsuan Men (Hsuan gate) where I saw the famous old Nan
Tang, ( South Church ) founded by the great Jesuit missionary
Matteo Ricci, S.J., in the early part of the XVII Century.

"We are not going to the railroad station for a train to the
prison farm or a distant prison," I thought.

On we drove.

"We are not going to the supreme court building. We have
gone too far north," I said to myself.

On we drove.

^Perhaps we are going to Fu Jen, to Li Kwang Chiao Nan
Chieh, I Hao, where I was arrested. How different will my
homecoming be from my departure, that day on which I was
arrested, July 25, 1951,* I thought.

On we drove.

Then we made a turn up a hutung, which I did not recognize
and after proceeding about five hundred feet passed through a
gate I had never seen, a newly constructed gate, judging from
the fresh paint it had. We entered a large compound with
many buildings.

I looked at the buildings. They looked familiar.

Suddenly I realized where I was.

I was stunned!

182

Back to Ts'ao Lan Tzu

"Goodness me! I am back in Ts'ao Lan Tzu the Peking
hell!" I said to myself.

I thought of how prisoners who had been sentenced and sent
to the prison farm or some labor prison had been recalled to
Ts'ao Lan Tzu for renewed "education" and confessions, when
new evidence had been found against them.

"Why have they brought me here? Am I in for more of the
old tortures of Ts'ao Lan Tzu? Perhaps," I thought des
perately, hoping, holding out to the end, "I will be taken to
court here in Ts'ao Lan Tzu and be released."

The future was uncertain but I was back in Ts'ao Lan Tzu!

In bewilderment, my handcuffs were removed. I was or
dered out of the jeep into a small room the room where my
belongings were inspected for the first time on 21 September,
1954, the day on which I had been sentenced to ten years of
imprisonment.

I squatted on the damp, dirty floor. This position once so
painful was now a position of rest.

Then various officers came and peered in through the little
window, crusted with layers of dirt, into the dimly lighted
room, until they saw me squatting with five months' growth of
beard that had sprouted in all directions. Each one studied
me, then left. Even the prison physician came and looked in
at me.

"Evidently the authorities of Ts'ao Lan Tzu," I thought,
"have some doubt of my identity. They are not sure if this
wildly bearded creature is Rui Ko-Ni or someone else substi
tuting for him."

"But why am I kept in this room? Perhaps they will keep me
here until the judge returns from his siesta when he will call
me to court and release me. It is now about i o'clock in the
afternoon."

The door opened and I was ordered out of the room.

"In which direction will I be ordered to go? To the east: to
the court room, or to the west: to the cells?"

183

Four Years in a Red Hell

I was ordered to proceed to the west.

"My/* I thought, "I am ordered to a cell, not to the court.
This is bad!"

Through the eastern part of this double compound, we
passed Section A, and B, where the old cells were in which I
had suffered a veritable hell. We entered the western part of
the compound. Formerly this was the Chao Yu Pu ( Educa
tional Ward) where prisoners who were "progressive" and
well advanced in their "reformation" were placed. Here they
enjoyed many privileges denied the other prisoners.

Now the Chao Yu Pu had been abolished and the section
rebuilt. I was ordered into an empty cell. The door was closed
and bolted.

The cell was full of dust. The walls were bare.

"Perhaps I will wait here until two o'clock or later, during
the afternoon session of the court, and then be taken to court
for my release/' I thought, still hoping to be released.

The officer opened die door and gave me a hand broom to
dean the cell.

"That is a bad sign. If I am ordered to clean the cell, I must
be going to stay here. But perhaps the officer wants me to
sweep the fcang so I can have a relatively clean place on which
to sit"

I swept the kang and then sat on a bundle I had brought in
and waited, waited to be called to court.

One, two hours passed. My hopes were low but not gone.

Then the officer opened the door and pasted on the wall a
program of the daily order to be observed in the cell. That was
the coup de grace. My hopes of release were killed!

"A daily order," I sighed to myself, "has only one meaning;
I am here to stay, how long I do not know, but I am not to be
released; on the contrary, I must be here for more punishment.
The old hell of Ts ao Lan Tzu is back!"

That night I did not sleep well. I rolled and tossed on the
hard wooden kang, plagued by misgivings of what was in
store for me.

184

-

40

An Encouraging Court Session

"Tso! (Go!)" the Sepo guard said as he stood with his big
pistol pointed at me, and motioned me to get going.

It was the afternoon of July 14, 1955. I had been called
out of my cell by the officer who handed me over to an armed
guard, in traditonal Ts'ao Lan Tzu style.

"I must be going to court," I thought.

"What will happen to me? Am I in for a repetition of the
early days at Ts'ao Lan Tzu: days when I was questioned, ca
joled, tortured by painful chains, sleepless nights, and the like,
pressed to confess 'crimes*?" I said to myself as I walked to
the court in anguish.

We stopped in front of Court Room No. 5, next to my former
main court room, Court Room No. 4.

The judge ordered us to enter. I passed through the door
into the court room and stood at attention before a young
judge whom I could not recognize as ever having seen before.
My last regular interpreter, a young woman, was there.

"Sit down," the judge said.

"That is an encouraging sign," I thought, as I took my seat

"How have you been this past year?" the judge asked.

"Since 21 September 1954, when I was sentenced, I have
been in a prison factory in the southwest corner of the South
City making match boxes. I worked hard, making as many
match boxes and as good match boxes as I could, to cut my
prison sentence in half /* I said, as I struck the air with my

185

Four Hears in a Red Hell

right hand, below my suspended left hand as if cutting a hang
ing sausage with one stroke.

"Yes, the court has received good reports about your labor."

"Well, that is good news!" I thought in great relief.

"What have you been thinking about?" he questioned.

"It was impossible for me to understand the newspapers
when they were read or to follow discussions in the study
classes, because I do not know Chinese well.

"On June 10, 1 was moved with many prisoners to an older
part of the prison and on June 17, six other foreign prisoners
and I were returned to our former building. I had heard that
there was danger of war between the U.S.A. and China and I
interpreted this return as a preparation to round up all the
foreigners, in order to place them in a special prison, as a
means of guaranteeing the security of China."

"What would you do if there was a war between China and
the U. S. A.?

"Would you join the army as you did in the Second World
War?" he continued.

"No/* I said. As a matter of fact, I was too old. But I did not
tell him that. I had been dropped from the active reserve of
ficers in January 1951, as too old in grade.

^ou would not join the U. S. Army. But what would you
do?"

This was a loaded question that had to be answered with
tact. I thought fast. I thought of a letter my brother Rev. Dr. J.
Francis Rigney, had sent me from San Diego, California,
which bore a government post office stamp, reading, "Pray for
, Peace." "So America," I thought, "wants and talks peace, and
communist China also says she wants 'peace,' although she un
doubtedly and quite arbitrarily attaches a different meaning
to the word. But, the term was acceptable to both and I can
use it without offending either/*

"I would work for peace; I would not want to see my own
countrymen killed, neither would I want to see Chinese
killed," I said.

186

An Encouraging Court Session

"You are not clear. Be clear. What would you do?"

"I would stand for peace. I have seen much of the destruc
tion of the Second World War," I said, as I gave a lengthy
description of the destruction I had seen in North Africa from
Tunis to Western Egypt; in Italy; in the Rhine Valley, includ
ing Cologne, and Aachen; in Normandy; in the London area;
in Tokyo. Then I added, "Another world war with atom and
hydrogen bombs would be much more destructive."

"Yes, but you are not clear what you would do?"

This kind of conversation went on for some time. Then I
thought he might be trying to induce me to join the commu
nist army, as millions of Chinese Nationalist Army prisoners
of war had been cajoled or forced into the Red Armies of Mao
Tse-tung. I decided to make a clear statement on this point.

"I would not take up arms against my country, the United
States of America, or against the armed forces of the U. S. A.
Neither would I take up arms against China," I said. As a mat
ter of fact, chaplains are non-combatants, and I was a chaplain
in the inactive reserves.

The judge grew angry and shouted back. "No one asks you
to take up arms against the American government, in fact you
do not have enough courage to do sol"

That was a relief for me. I had made myself clear, I would
not be cajoled into fighting my country and the court recog
nizes this stand and declines to attempt to move me from it.

"If you would be out in society again, would you do any
harm towards the 'people'?"

"No," I said.

"I had never harmed the good people of China and would
not do so in the future. In the past, I worked to protect them
from the evil of Marxist communism and I would continue to
do so," I thought to myself.

"What else have you been thinking about?" he said.

"I have been wondering just why I was brought back to
Ts'ao Lan Tzu."

"Well, I will tell you," he said after some hesitancy, *TTou

187

Four Years in a Red Hell

see you do not know Chinese and consequently cannot follow
the indoctrination course. You were brought back here so you
could study about the New China in English."

"What a relief/* I thought, "he has made a clear statement
why I was returned here, not for punishment but for the indoc
trination to which I had been exposed, off and on, since my
arrest"

"Why did you grow that beard?" the judge asked.

"For two reasons: The first because I thought a beard
looked less disorderly than the fuzz that covered my face. We
were shaved or sheared in the prison factory every two weeks
or half a month. This meant that our faces looked clean one
day and unclean or fuzzy 13 or 14 days. The second reason
was I wanted to experiment with growing a little beard and
mustache. Later I will trim and reduce this present beard."

"If you desire it, I can arrange that you will be shaved
daily," he said to my great surprise.

"No, thank you, I am satisfied and want to experiment with
growing a beard,"

"Very well, you may keep your beard!"

The judge also told me that the court considered me honest,
all Catholics honest! This was encouraging indeed.

After a few more questions and answers about trivial mat
ters, the session that had lasted about one and a half hours
came to a close.

The judge dismissed me and told me to return to my cell
which I did in rather good spirits.

188

-

41

Solitary Confinement

ON JULY 15, 1955, 1 was called out and given a thorough phy
sical examination by the prison physician. Among other things
he also counted and measured the scars I had on my wrists
from handcuffs and on my ankles from fetters, scars I will
carry to my grave.

He also made a spinal reflex test by a stroke of a small ham
mer, below the patella, and then by tickling the skin of the
front lower abdomen. The reaction of the kick especially of
the right leg was slight, as was the quivering of the skin espe
cially of the right side.

This perplexed me but as the physician spoke no English
I was unable to inquire about it from him.

I had been walking with rather stiff lower legs. Cell-mates
remarked in the end of 1951, that I walked as though I still
had fetters, or like an old woman with bound feet.

I remembered how in August 1951, the judge threatened
to cripple me for life, if I failed to confess properly.

"Can it be that I am partly paralyzed or in the early stages
of a form of creeping paralysis?** I thought and worried for
many days, even to the writing of these memories.

When I told him I had vomited blood in the previous April,
he looked much concerned and gave me a chest examination.

He weighed me and found I weighed 101 pounds. I told

o " *

KJTT> I had weighed 180 pounds on being arrested, and that I
must have dropped to below 100 before I went to the prison
factory where our meals were somewhat better than at Ts 7 ao
LanTzu.

189

Four Years in a Red Hell

On the next day, 16 July, the physician visited me in my
cell and told me I was too thin. He inquired about my food
and asked me if I liked wo tou. I told him I could eat wo tou
but never liked it. He then told me he would order rice for my
meals instead of wo tou and advised me to buy one pint of
milk a day, to be delivered by the prison kitchen personnel, as
well as fresh eggs. I ordered these and received them. From
then on, for my last eight weeks in prison, I was given rice
which I like very much.

Around the same time, I was really delightfully surprised
when a big food package arrived from my family, and a one
kilo (or about 2.4 pounds) package from the American Red
Cross. Later I received two more such packages from the
American Red Cross and even a 5 kilo ( 11 pounds) box, as
well as another big package from my family.

These packages were simply grand, with the instant coffee,
cocoa, powdered milk, biscuits, tinned fish and meat, nuts,
jellies, etc., they contained.

At first I rationed these supplies eating only two tins a week.
Hie coffee was consumed in as little daily amounts as possible
to make the supply last. I had not tasted coffee forJour years.

All this was done because I did not know if I would ever
receive any more such packages or if I did, whether they might
not be suddenly cut off. Often before I was allowed a privilege
such as receiving packages from the sisters, "then suddenly
with no warning they were cut off.

However, when more packages arrived fro^SKiamily and
the American Red Cross sent a 5 kilo pa<Bagir6very two
weeks, I had to increase my rations, to f o;irr tiiif a week, other
wise my supplies would accumulate and become a double
problem. They would be difficult to store in myjbell and dif
ficult to transport, if I moved.

I felt very grateful to my family for these sptendid packages.
Later I learned that a Divine Word Missionary Brother in

190

Solitary Confinement

Techny, Illinois, had made up some of these packages, send
ing them under my family's name.

I likewise felt very grateful to the American Red Cross f 01
their packages. I thought of the excellent services I had seen
the American Red Cross do for the U. S. servicemen in the
Second World War. Now they were doing all they could for
us civilian prisoners.

The first three or four weeks in Ts'ao Lan Tzu were weeks
of hopefulness. Many events pointed to an improvement in
my prison status, if not my impending release: the court ses
sion, in which the judge said I had worked well and was hon
est, and had even offered to have me shaved every day; the
physical examination; the reception of the food packages; the
treatment I received from the officers these never shouted
at me as before.

Each night on retiring, I reviewed and balanced up the
events of the day. "This was a favorable indication. That was
unfavorable, etc./' I would say to myself. Usually the balance
was favorable.

During the period in Ts'ao Lan Tzu, from July 13 to Sep
tember 11, a little over eight weeks, I was in solitary confine
ment. Thi&was a great relief, away from all the pushing and
pulling; the shouting of chu changs and pen changs; the al
most continual forced isolation or persecution from cell
mates; the awful tou chenging of myself or other prisoners.

It seemed so restful, to be alone, alone with God.

At tim^i I could hear tou chenging going on in the eastern
section. "Shoal Shoa! Shoal" from the distance really sounded
like the barking of packs of dogs.

When tou chenging was done across the yard from where
I was, it sounded louder, more distinct and therefore, not so
beastly.

I never felt alone in prison. I was continually mindful of

Four Years in a Red Hell

the Presence of God. Now in solitary, I meditated as I pleased.
I made formal daily meditations which had been impossible
before. I continued, with more recollection, to pray my three
rosaries every day.

I also thought over many problems, as those related to the
re-establishment of Fu Jen University.

I thought much about the Gold Coast in West Africa and
Achimota College now the University College of the Gold
Coast. %

St. Mary's Mission Seminary in Techny, Illinois, where I
had taught before leaving for the Gold Coast in May, 1939,
was often on my mind.

I even thought much about St. Xaviers University in New
Orleans, conducted by the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament.

Around July 17, four days after coming to Ts'ao Lan Tzu,
the woman who had served as my interpreter brought me com
munist literature to read, especially back issues of "The Peo
ple's China/ 9 and "New Times.," a weekly publication of
Moscow.

She also brought me a book entitled, "Perfidious America/*
This book was so much anti-American propaganda over the
Korean cease-fire. It stated that Americans after the most
inhuman cruelties ever perpetrated, had tried every kind of
deceit, treachery, etc., to continue the war, to sabotage the
cease-fire talks when the "people" of the world had forced
them to the peace talks, etc., etc.

A book by a "progressive" was given me to read. I remem
ber how this "progressive" complained so bitterly because he
had been hand-cuffed by the police for about half an hour. I
thought, "You should have been in communist China and have
acted and spoken against the Red government similarly to the
way you did against the American government. You would
have worn not handcuffs alone but also rusty, dirty, sharp
fetters and not for only half an hour but for half a year or more;
you would not have been allowed to be free to fly to Nassau

192

Solitary Confinement

for your wedding before being taken out to the Tien Ch'iao
to be shot!"

Another book was about the lives of the Rosenbergs. I
thought that no one in Red China had had the opportunities
of an open trial with their own chosen counsels of defense, as
the Rosenbergs had. The communists accused the U. S. A.
government of murdering this couple. But they overlooked the
hundreds they had murdered in Peking alone, in 1951. On the
Easter of that year, 199 were reported in the Red papers as hav
ing been executed. In Tientsin, on the same Easter, I was told
250 were executed. I always think of that as "Black Easter."

Another book was a Chinese Red Cross propaganda publi
cation against the Americans, for "forcing" the inhabitants of
a certain island to leave before the Reds came. I had never
heard of any Red Cross society in the Western World publish
ing propaganda! I thought of a propaganda booklet about
acts of immorality of unnamed U. S. and British servicemen
in Korea. This was issued by the Chinese Red Cross Society
and I was forced to read it at least six times, in 1953.

Another book was about the so-called Rearmament of West
ern Germany which I read with great interest, because be
tween the lines I could read that western Europe was reviving
to the dismay of the barbarians of the Kremlin.

Around August 2Oth, my interpreter stopped bringing this
literature. This seemed an unfavorable indication. I wondered
why this literature was stopped.

Then around September 8, 9, and loth we had gloomy,
rainy days.

On September loth I was especially depressed. I had been
back in Ts'ao Lan Tzu over eight weeks and seemed to be far
from being released. My hopefulness of the end of July and
early August had died down. It seemed I had entered a new
era, but a long one, in prison. So often I had had hopes of being
released and just as often these hopes were shattered,

I retired a weary and depressed prisoner that night of the
tenth of September, nineteen hundred and fifty-five!

193

'42

Released

"TODAY is SUNDAY, September the eleventh," I said to myself
as I scratched off the tenth day of the month on my home
made calendar.

It was a cloudy and chilly day.

After breakfast the assistant head of the prison came to my
cell and felt my summer clothing which actually was too light
for the chilly days we were then having, and spoke to me in
Chinese. I thought he asked me if I had warmer clothing,
which I did have and told him so. Then he motioned to put
them on and left,

I put on a heavier coat which my family had recently sent
me, and thought it was considerate of the officer to show such
concern over my comfort.

The same officer soon returned and asked me if I had heav
ier pants and why I had not put them on. He then motioned
me to pack up my belongings.

I was perplexed. I did not know what I was in for.

"Perhaps I am to move to a different cell, perhaps to a dif
ferent prison reserved for foreigners. There is a slight proba
bility that I be released," I thought. But in the past, my hopes
for release had been shattered so often, that I suppressed such
hopes this time.

As I was busy packing, another officer came and ordered
me to follow him immediately, leaving my unfinished packing.

I followed him, more perplexed.

He ordered me into a jeep.

194

Released

I was really puzzled.

"Ni shih chu fa yuan," he said. I was not sure whether his
words meant, "You are going to the court" or "You are going
to another prison."

We drove east, to almost the Tien An Men (Gate of Heav
enly Peace) on the Red Square, then turned south to a 3 or 4
storied, yellow building, that looked like a factory.

"My goodness!" I thought. "Another prison factory! Now I
will have to start from the beginning at some other trade! It
was difficult to learn match box making. Now I will have to
start from the bottom at something else."

We stopped in front of this sinister looking building and I
was led to a side entrance leading to the basement.

I was led to an empty room with a desk in it.

"This must be the room where new inmates are registered,"
I thought.

There were bars on the window.

In my depression, I waited for some officer to enter to ask
my name, length of sentence, etc.

After about half an hour, no one came. I was puzzled.

Then I asked to go to the toilet.

A guard let me out to the toilet. On the way I passed many
empty rooms with their doors opened.

"These do not look like prison cells. Never have I seen so
many empty cells in Ts'ao Lan Tzu or Tzu Hsing Lu prisons.

On my return to my room, I looked out through the barred
window and noticed that none of the windows on the floors
above the basement had bars.

"This is not a prison!" I said to myself in great relief. "This
is a court house!"

I was excited.

"I am going to court to have my prison term changed, per
haps shortened or terminated."

I was now hopeful.

In about another half hour, a guard ordered me to follow

195

Four Years in a Red Hell

him. He led me upstairs to the ground floor. The building
seemed quite unoccupied by cadres or people, except for one
room to which I was taken.

This room was about 30 feet by 15 feet. About a dozen peo
ple, cadres or the like were in it. At the end of the room was a
gray haired man, apparently a judge at a desk. To his left
were three persons including my ordinary interpreter,

"I am in a court," I thought, excited with hope.

I stood at attention, with my cap in my right hand.

"Ni chiao she ma mind tzu? (What is your name?)"

"Rui Ko Ni (Rigney)," I said without waiting for the in
terpreter.

"Do you understand what the judge asked you?" the in
terpreter asked.

"Yes, he asked me my name."

"Where do you live?" the judge continued.

"Li Kwang Ch'iao Nan Chieh I Hao "

Then the judge read a document on his desk. It was short.

My hopes reached an all time high.

The interpreter translated the statement of the judge. I was
never given the document the judge read or a copy of it. As
far as I can remember, it stated that I had worked well in the
prison factory, kept the rules of the prison, had recognized
my crimes and reformed myself by labor. Therefore my case
had been referred to the Supreme Military Court which re
turned it to the Municipal Court and he ended, "You are
released."

I wondered for a moment if I could believe my senses, then
spoke.

"Thank you," I said, not wanting to say any more especially
in adulation of the communist government.

The judge then motioned me to leave.

It would be difficult to express my feelings.

Four years and two months of hell had come to an end!

Years of prayers had been heard!

196

Released

Repeated hopes had at long last been realized!

I turned and floated out of the court room, out through the
corridor, through the main entrance.

I had entered the building as a prisoner, through the base
ment.

Now I left through the main entrance as a freed man.

On I floated, down the wide entrance stairs, at the foot of
which was a limousine with its doors opened.

I made to get into this but was motioned by the guard to get
into the jeep in which I had come.

We drove out of the court grounds.

I was released!

I was free!

Thanks be to God!

197

-

43

The Journey Out of China Started

ON ABBJVING back at Ts'ao Lan Tzu, I was returned to my cell,
where I found the door opened: a sign I was no longer a pris
oner. I completed packing my belongings and was then taken
to an empty room near the drill grounds, where I waited, ex
pecting to be returned to my former residence at Li Kwang
Ch'iao Nan Chieh I Hao ? the former Fu Jen University.

The judge whom I had seen on July 14th, came with a male
interpreter.

He informed me that I had been released because of my
good record at the work prison, and because of the policy of
leniency of the "People's" government.

"There is one more item about which I would like to inform
you," he said.

"There has been a conference at Geneva, Switzerland, on
an ambassadorial level of the Ambassadors of the "People Y*
China and the U. S. government. At this conference an agree
ment has been reached to exchange civilian citizens of these
countries, returning them to their mother country. The British
government has agreed to serve as intermediaries of this
exchange."

Then I understood one reason at least why I was kept in
solitary for eight weeks, prior to my release. The communist
government did not want me to learn about these ambassa
dorial conferences in Geneva from news reports or from cell
mates. Apparently they followed this policy of keeping me in
the dark so they could the better make their final attempt at

198

The Journey Out of China Started

Ts'ao Lan Tzu to brainwash me. Knowledge of these confer
ences would embolden me, they must have thought, to resist
more strongly their indoctrination, their final efforts to turn
me against the free world, against my country.

I also understood why I was given a good physical examina
tion in mid July and good food and treatment since July isth.
This was done to build up my poor health, as well as to pro
vide that my last and clearest impressions of the Chinese
communists would be good ones.

"What do you plan to do on being released from the prison?"
the judge asked.

"I will first go to the dentist for dental care, then I will
apply for my exit visa."

"Could you postpone your dental work for two or three
days?" he asked.

"Yes, of course I can," I said, as I thought how for about
three and a half years I had suffered from toothaches from
poor teeth, unable to eat without much pain and had been
repeatedly refused my requests for dental care. It would be
small matter to wait two or three days.

"The reason for this request is because the 'People's' gov
ernment will help you leave China as soon as possible."

At noon, tiffin was served me.

"When had I ever seen such a lovely meal served in Ts'ao
Lan Tzu?" I thought.

"Scrambled eggs and man tou (white bread, steamed in
Chinese style ) !" I said to myself as I saw the meal. "I certainly
am not a prisoner any longer!"

About 4 o'clock my former ordinary interpreter came and
told me to prepare my belongings for a journey.

"Am I going north or south? If I am going south, I will not
need the warm clothing that a journey to the north would
call for," I said.

After some hesitation she said, "South."

"Southward," I thought, "that means I will leave China

199

Four Years in a Red Hell

either passing through Shanghai or being taken to the border
of Hong Kong."

I prepared a small bundle of light clothing I had for my
journey. The rest of my belongings : clothing, bedding, uncon-
sumed tinned food, I prepared and requested be sent to the
good Chinese S.Sp.S. sisters (Holy Ghost Missionary Sisters)
who had gone to such sacrifice to render me aid whenever
they were allowed to. The interpreter said the police would
see to it that this request would be carried out.

She then introduced me to two policemen, one of whom
she said would take charge of me on my journey out of China.
I will call the head of these two guards "Senior" and his
assistant "]unior"

About five o'clock, I was driven in a jeep with my two
guards to a hotel in the South City. It was clean.

Senior told me I need not leave my room for meals. These
would be brought to me in my room. I understood. I was to
be confined to my room until departure.

I took a good bath a bath in a tiled clean bath room, and
at my leisure!

What a relief it was to be free to go to the toilet as I wanted
to, without being rushed or under the eyes of an armed
guard, and with modern, ceramic facilities at my disposal.

A good western meal was served me in western style. I am
very fond of Chinese meals and manner of serving them. But
I could not but relish to the full this excellent western meal.

I then prayed my Divine Office for the first time in four
years and two months. How consoling that was! My old brevi
ary, bearing the ear-marks of a quarter of a century or more of
use, worn covers, thumb marks on each page, the back broken,
so that the body of pages were split into two separate parts,
the ribbons long since worn to shreds.

How dear it was! What memories it recalled! My ordina
tions as a sub-deacon, deacon, and priest! How beautiful were
those psalms, how lovely the various antiphons, how inspiring

200

The Journey Out of China Started

the lessons! And the Te Deum! that symphony of praise! I
prayed it twice that night of September the eleventh nineteen
hundred and fifty-fiveonce for the Divine Office and once as
a special prayer of thanksgiving to Almighty God for my
release.

That night for the first time in fifty months, I retired when
I wanted to and lay on a soft bed with clean white sheets.

For the first time since July 25, 1951, I retired in an unlit
room.

How wonderful I felt as I lay on that soft bed, in the dark,
telling myself over and over again: "You are free You are
free You are free!"

I did not sleep much that night, September 11, 1955. How
could I!

*THow did you sleep last night?" Senior asked me on the
morning of September 12, 1955.

"Not very well ."

"Yes! I know that. You got up several times, putting on the
light of your bedroom. What is the trouble with you? Are you
afraid to return to the U. S.?"

"I am not afraid. I have no reason to be afraid to return to
my home country. I could not sleep because I was so happy
over my release from prison."

In the evening I was told we would leave Peking on a train
around 10 o'clock that night.

I asked Senior for my hotel bill. He replied that the "Peo
ple's" government was paying all my travelling and hotel
expenses until I crossed the border of China.

Around 9:30 o'clock that evening we drove to the main rail
road station of Peking and shortly afterwards left that beauti
ful city on the train bound for the south.

201

-

44

Who Was Brainwashing Whom

THE TRAIN COACHES which were all sleepers were laid out in
European style with an aisle to the side opening into com
partments. In my car which was first class, each compartment
accommodated four passengers. In the second class there were
six bunks to a compartment.

In the compartment where I was were my two guards,
Senior and Junior, and a fourth man in plain clothes appar
ently well known to my uniformed police guards. Junior spoke
English and was my interpreter and constant companion or
guard.

In each compartment were upper and lower bunks on either
side. The bunks were opeft and wooden. A straw mat and a
blanket were supplied each passenger for night use.

On Tuesday, September 13, 1 awoke after a relatively good
night's rest, in spite of the hard wooden berth. When I left
the compartment to wash and shave, Junior accompanied me.
He said he wanted to protect me whenever I left the compart
ment. He and I took meals in the dining car after the rush was
over. The meals were good.

At supper I asked Junior if I were being deported. I con
cluded I must be undergoing deportation since I could not
leave the compartment without one or the other guard ac
companying me.

It seemed this question took him by surprise. He hesitated
then said, "Do not mistrust the 'People's' government. You are

202

Who Was Brainwashing Whom

really released and the TPeopleV government is helping you
to leave China as soon as possible."

As I gathered later, I was not deported technically.

After this question, I was not accompanied by a guard when
I went to the toilet or to wash my teeth or face.

Sometime this day, I learned I was to be taken to the border
of Hong Kong via Hankow and Canton.

Throughout the journey, from Peking to the Hong Kong
border, Junior worked on me. It seemed his efforts were the
last attempt of the Chinese communists to indoctrinate me.

I told him in these discussions that I would never become a
Marxist because this system is based on dialectical materialism
which I could not accept as a Christian and that I did not
believe in the communist theory of class warfare and in their
practice of confiscating property without compensation of the
owner.

I also told him that the communists made a big mistake all
over the world by not restricting their theories to economics
and politics to the exclusion of religion. I told him that the
Church of China would support any government that was not
opposed to her religious faith and practices.

He thanked me for these various suggestions and said he
would report them to his superiors.

"Are you married, Rigney?" Junior said embarking on a new
topic of discussion, after a long silence.

"No"

"Why notr

"Catholic priests of the Latin rite do not marry."

"Why not? That seems unreasonable to me."

"The celibacy of the Catholic Church had its roots in the
example of Christ and St. John the Apostle, Later the PEO
PLE, demanded it The PEOPLE," I emphasized, "in the
early centuries of the western Church preferred a celibate
clergy to a married one."

Then after a long period of silence Junior continued, "Rig-

203

Four Years in a Red Hell

ney, I feel sorry for you. I feel sorry for all Catholic priests
because they are not allowed to marry."

"Well, that is what the PEOPLE want/' I said, "and the
Catholic Church has ever considered, and whenever possible,
carried out the will of the PEOPLE!"

When we reached Hankow, Junior and I took breakfast in
a little Chinese restaurant. He started his usual discussion
about Marxist communism.

"Rigney, you are hopeless. This is clear to me from the dis
cussions we have had so far. You will never be a communist/'
Junior said.

"'Indeed, I will never be a Marxist communist."

"But there is one point on which we agree and that is
peace."

"Yes," I replied. "I stand for peace, the peace of Christ.**

As our conversation continued I said, "I have profited from
our discussions the past two days. An idea has been growing
in my mind from these conversations we have had over com
munism."

"Is that so! What is it?"

"Karl Marx made a big mistake/*

"Karl Marx made a mistake?" Junior exclaimed, not a little
shocked.

"Yes," I continued, "Karl Marx made a mistake. He elabo
rated his theory, then worked to make the facts fit the theory.
This is unscientific. He should have studied first the facts,
evolving his theory on the basis of the facts, making the theory
fit the facts, not the facts fit the theory."

Junior did not know much about the writings of Karl Marx,
the prophet of the new religion of the worship of the god
matter. In fact, I got the impression that the Chinese commu
nists know little about Karl Marx. They are better acquainted
with the works of Lenin, the protege of General Ludendorff ,
and Stalin, the erstwhile ally of Hitler, and of course the quis
ling Mao Tse-tung.

Who Was Brainwashing Whom

Junior did not take me up on this point but shifted the dis
cussion to the question of the existence of God.

"You Christians believe in God. You are not scientific in
this."

"Look Junior/' I said, "do you see this cup?"

"Yes."

"It is here now, in position A." Then I moved it about a
foot and said, "It is no longer in position A, but in a new posi
tion, position B."

"Yes."

"The reason the cup passed from position A to position B
is not intrinsic, within the cup. The cup does not contain the
reason for this change of position. If the cup in position A,
contained the reason for being in position B, it would not be
in position A but in position B. But it is not in position B but in
position A. Therefore, the cup in position A does not contain
the reason for being in position B. The reason is external to the
cup. In other words the cup must be moved, or as St. Thomas
Aquinas put it, 'Everything that moves, is moved by another!'
I moved the cup. In turn, I was moved by energy released
from the food I recently ate. The food I ate received its energy,
was moved by energy from the sun which caused the process
of photosynthesis. The sun gets its energy from another
source, perhaps the disintegration of atoms and so we pro
ceed from the moved to the external mover until by necessity
we must admit the existence of a Being that had the reason
for its motion within Itself. That being is God, or Tien Chu or
Deus, or Zeus, or Allah, or X or whatever you wish to call It.
It is the Unmoved Mover." I explained this proof for the
existence of God from other angles.

Soon I began to wonder who was brainwashing whom. Was
Junior brainwashing me or was I "brainwashing" Junior?

205

-

45

Farewell China Till We Meet Again

WE ARRIVED in Canton in the afternoon of Thursday, Septem
ber 15, 1955. Two local policemen joined Senior and Junior
as my guards. These four policemen and I drove to a hotel,
where I was placed in a room with bath, and told my meals
would be brought up to me.

That evening Senior came to my room, with Junior, and
read the statement about the agreement reached at Geneva
between the U. S. government and the Red government of
China to exchange civilian nationals. Junior translated, and I
was obliged to give in writing that I had heard and under
stood this statement.

Senior then took the trouble of getting my Chinese money
changed into Hong Kong money. He also purchased half a
pound of the best kind of Chinese tea, the Lung Tsing ( Green
Dragon ) , because I had said I liked Chinese tea.

He likewise purchased two shirts for me although I had
told him I had two shirts and needed no more.

About eleven o'clock as I lay in my bed, planning what to
do when I crossed the border of China into Hong Kong, Junior
knocked at the door and told me that since I was to spend my
last night in China, he would like to sleep in the same room
with me, in the second bed that was in the room.

I told him I had no objections.

I thought that the communists feared I might get in touch
with someone through the window, or by sneaking out of my
room, and therefore had ordered a guard for my room.

On the morning of Friday, September 16, 1955, my four

206

Farewell China Till We Meet Again

police guards drove me to the railroad station for my last ride
in China.

On this last stretch of my journey, Junior apologized for
having argued so much with me over my beliefs.

"You do not like to argue, do you?" he said.

"No, I do not like to argue. If anyone is interested in re
ligion such as Catholicism, I am very willing to explain my
religious belief, Catholicism, to him, but I will not argue with
him or put pressure on him to accept it."

Then after some time, I explained again to Junior that the
"People's" government had no reason to fear the Chinese
Catholic clergy. They are willing to kbor under any form of
government, including the communist government. They only
ask the government to grant them religious freedom.

I then wrote a letter to the "People's" government thanking
them for what they had done for me, as helping me to leave
China, at their expense. I wrote nothing that would deny the
inhuman treatment they had dealt me during my imprison
ment of four years and two months.

After this Junior told me he and Senior had had a confer
ence and decided to shake hands with me on leaving me at
the border.

Junior also said that he hoped I would return to the "Peo
ple's" China as a friend of the "People."

We were nearing Lo Wu, the station on the China-Hong
Kong border.

I had been arrested on July 25, 1951, and released on Sep
tember 11, 1955. I spent 1509 days in prison. My expulsion
journey lasted five days. If these five days be counted, I was
1514 days under police guard in communist China.

Around about noon, we arrived at Lo Wu.

I was placed in an empty room where I waited for about
one hour. Senior asked me to write and sign a letter stating
that I had travelled from Peking to the border of China with
out losing anything. This Was true so I signed it.

207

Four Years in a Red Hell

Then the customs officers came and examined my luggage.
This being over my guards conducted me out of the station
building. I carried a hand bag. They assigned the rest of my
baggage to a carrier who carried it for me over the border.

At the southern end of the station, Senior and Junior took
leave of me, shaking my hand.

Alone, without police guard, I walked southward, to Her
Majesty's Crown Colony of Hong Kong.

I did not know what to expect on arriving in Hong Kong.
The communists had helped me to leave China as soon as
possible.

"Perhaps," I thought, "the British will expect me to leave
Hong Kong as soon as possible. Where will I stay? Will I be
welcomed at the Catholic Cathedral? There are no Divine
Word Missionaries in Hong Kong to welcome me or to offer
me living accommodations while I receive the dental care I
need, secure new and proper clothing, etc., and help me ob
tain transportation to the U. S. A."

I approached the bridge over the Lo Wu river and saw a
few uniformed British police. "I will tell them I am Father
Harold Rigney and request that they take me to the American
consul," I thought

208

-

46

Hong Kong: Freedom

"ARE YOU Father Rigney?" one of the Hong Kong police of
ficers said in what an American would improperly call a Brit
ish accent.

I cannot explain the feelings I experienced when this kind
Scotsman spoke to me. His few words were a message of wel
come, a message of kindness, such as I had not heard since
Lin Piao's Red hordes poured into Peiping on February i,

1949-

For six years and eight months, with the exception of the
last two months when I was accorded better treatment as a
last effort to convert me to communistic ideas or sympathies,
I had suffered rebuffs, insults, expressions of hatred, perse
cutions, imprisonment, tortures, false accusations, confisca
tions, treachery, insecurity, from public authorities in com
munist China.

Now at last a public authority, a British policeman, spoke
kindly, sincerely, friendly, offering me hospitality, me an
American, a foreigner.

"Yes, I am Father Rigney," I said and I could have kissed
the free soil of Her Majesty's Crown Colony of Hong Kong,
which with nearby Portuguese Macao is a haven, a free spot,
adjoining the police state of the "People's" China.

The stouthearted Scotsman, A. L. Gordon, Superintendent
of Police of Hong Kong, said, "Welcome," and approached me
with outstretched hand which I shook, too moved to wring it
as I should have.

209

Four Years in a Red Hell

Then a second British officer, Paul Grace, Superintendent
of Police of Hong Kong, approached me and welcomed me,
shaking my hand.

"Tsai Chien Chung Kuo (Farewell China till we meet
again)," I said to myself and began to cross the bridge over
the Lo Wu river, the border of China.

A third British officer, Derrick Pierce, Inspector of Police
of Hong Kong, followed suit with a warm welcome.

Father Poletti rushed up to welcome me and give me a
letter. This zealous priest, the pastor of Taipo, keeps watch
at the border for incoming bishops, priests, brothers and
sisters.

Mrs. Margarite Shrathie, Representative of the British Red
Cross, came forward to extend a hand of welcome.

Mr. Richard Tomlin, Representative of the American Red
Cross came up to welcome me and shake my hand.

Mr. Truman Solvernd, another Representative of the Amer
ican Red Cross greeted me, shook my hand and welcomed me
to freedom.

As long as I live, I shall never be able to express the feelings
that overwhelmed me on that occasion. Only one who has gone
through the hell of Chinese communist prisons and the bru
tality of Mao Tse-tung's China would be able to understand
my feelings.

I do not remember the questions these kind people asked
me or what I replied. I was so excited!

I read the letter Father Poletti gave me and found to my joy
that Father Henry Striethorst, S.V.D., whom I had thought
was certainly in prison, had escaped arrest and was in Hong
Kong.

The police then invited me into the station while a phone
call was put through to Father Henry Striethorst, S.V.D., in
forming him of my arrival.

After this I was given transportation in the beach wagon
of the American Red Cross to be driven to Victoria, on Hong
Kong Island.

210

Hong Kong: Freedom

About a thousand feet down the road we met the press and
television men. I got off and said to these men, "I have waited
four years and two months for this day. I wish to thank Al
mighty God, the American government, the British govern
ment and all who have helped me to realize this day."

I hesitated, then said to the press men and TV men who
were there, "I hope none of you will ever have to go through
the 're-education' I have gone through."

We then drove on to Kowloon, where we were ferried over
to Victoria, and then to the Catholic Center in the King's
Building, where I met Father Striethorst, S.V.D.

Father Smith, a Maryknoll Missionary, drove Father Striet
horst and me to the S.VJD. Procure at Tung Shan Terrace
No. 10, Stubbs Road. On the way we stopped at the American
Consulate General where Mr. Robert Aylward, U. S. consul,
whom I knew from Peking, came out to greet me.

On arriving at the S.V.D. Procure, I began to learn that all
the foreign Divine Word Missionaries were out of China but
Father Peter Huengsberg, S.V.D., a prisoner in Ts'ao Lan
Tzu, Peking.

I also began to learn that ever so many people had prayed
and worked for my release.

I had no doubt that my dear old stepmother, that good
soul, a niece of the late Senator George Norris of Nebraska, as
well as my brother, sisters and their families, the members of
the Divine Word Missionaries and the Holy Ghost Missionary
Sisters, prayed unceasingly for my release. But I was surprised
and deeply moved to learn that thousands of little children,
God bless them, prayed for me and wrote letters of petition on
my behalf, as did countless other people in my native and
beloved Chicago as well as in other regions as the Gold Coast
of West Africa (where much of my heart remains), Ireland,
the Philippines and Germany.

I began to understand why the treatment accorded to roe
in prison started to improve in April 1955.

The effects of my dear, noble sister, Mrs. Mary Anne Han-

211

Four Years in a Red Hell

ley, and of that tireless, self-effacing priest: Father Ralph M.
Wiltgen, S.V.D., assigned by Divine Word Missionaries in the
States to work for my release, began to take effect shortly
before this.

Due to their efforts, "The New World" of the Chicago arch
diocese, Mr. Thomas Reynolds and "The Chicago Sun-Times, 7 *
Mr. Joseph B. Meegan and "The Back of the Yards Journal/*
and N.C.W.C. News Service were informed about my case and
began to publicize it and fight for my release in February
and March.

As a consequence the Chinese communist government must
have decided in April 1955, to prepare to release me.

Senator Paul H. Douglas of Illinois submitted a concurrent
resolution (No. 32) on May 5, in the U. S. Senate on my
behalf.

Congresswoman Marguerite Stitt Church, Congressmen
James C. Murray, John Kluczynski, Charles Boyle, Barrett
O'Hara, Melvin Price and John McCormack, spoke on my
behalf on the floor of congress.

On October 14, 1955, my sister, Mrs. James (Mary Anne)
Hanley, wrote the following:

"I would like to tell you of a man who, I think, is directly
responsible for your release. For some time, the family and
Fr. Wiltgen had been trying to get different people interested
in your case, but we did not have much luck. Then we took it
up with Mr. Joseph B. Meegan, who is executive secretary of
the Back of the Yards Council. He was unaware of your plight
and was amazed at the things we told him regarding yourself.
Around the first part of April, Joe Meegan had business in
Washington. While there taking care of his business, he called
on various members of the State Dept and they assured him
that they were doing all they could for you. When Joe Meegan
returned to Chicago, he inaugurated a letter-writing cam
paign and he publicized it in the Back of the Yards Journal,
the Sun-Times and on radio and TV programs. The local repre-

212

Hong Kong: Freedom

sentatives got such a deluge of letters that they had to make
up form letters in order to answer. I forgot to say that in
February "The New World' published your letter to Jim and
me and got a terrific response from the people; people wrote
in asking what they could do. Addresses of local representa
tives were printed; people wrote and that's the way things
were until Joe took over. Once Jim was riding on a bus on the
North Side of Chicago and he heard some people say on the
bus, 'Have you written in for Fr. Rigney yet?'

"Then Joe Meegan decided that we would send all letters
directly to President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Fr. Roman J.
Berendt, who is president of the Back of the Yards Council,
wrote a letter to all priests in the Archdiocese of Chicago. Joe
Meegan requested that the sisters and school children of the
parochial schools write directly to President Dwight D. Eisen
hower. This campaign with the children and sisters and other
adults writing to the President, amounted, according to the
latest tally, to 65,000 letters which broke a record for any
campaign to the White House in the United States. Joe had
letters from the principals of over 300 schools telling the num
bers of letters their children wrote tallying 65,000. The Presi
dent answered some of the letters; Ma also received an answer.
Through publicity, letters were not only coming from' Chi
cago, but all over the U. S. and foreign countries ( Francis and
Dorothy started a campaign where they live: San Diego and
Muskegon). TV and radio program^ were nationally broad
cast all over the U. S. Letters came from Canada, the Gold
Coast (Africa), Philippines and Germany.

"Later, more letters were written to China in a follow-up
campaign; they went to Chou En-lai and Madame Shih Liang.
Ma received an answer from Chou En-lai via the Chinese Red
Cross; and they invited her over to see you, but our State
Dept. vetoed that because of no representation in that coun
try and no assurance of safety.

"On April 23 Fr. Fu, S.V.D., and Fr. Wiltgen made arrange-

2*3

Four years in a Red Hell

merits to celebrate your Silver Jubilee by having a Mass in
your honor, which was open to the public, at St. Augustine's
Church. The Mass was said by Fr. John Fu who was with you
at the University, and a wonderful sermon was given by Fr.
Wiltgen. Many people attended; all the family was there, even
the children. It was a wonderful Mass, tho quite sad because
of your absence. That same day, our Mayor of three days,
Richard J. Daley, who is a good friend of the Council (also
was reared in the Back of the Yards neighborhood), sent a
telegram to the President of the U. S. requesting that he do
everything in his power to secure your release,

"On May 3, Joe and Ma flew to Washington at the Coun
cil's expense to confer with the members of the State Dept.,
and this was highly publicized by the newspapers, radio, and
TV all over the U. S., and some newspapers in foreign coun
tries had articles on this. A couple of weeks later, Prime Min
ister U Nu of Burma was in New York. When Joe found that
out he flew to New York and asked this man if there was any
thing that he could do in your case. U Nu seemed very inter
ested and after hearing what Joe had to say, he said, T. think
that this priest should be released.' Joe gave him two memoes
which he took back to Burma late in July.

"Almost every week the Back of the Yards Journal printed
the latest news of your case. Tom Reynolds, the managing
editor of The Chicago Sun-Times, became interested in your
case; and there were almost daily news items in The Chicago
Sun-Times about you, while still encouraging the letter-writ
ing campaign. Our State Dept. had appointed Ambassador
U. Alexis Johnson to meet with Ambassador Wang Ping-nan
of China at Geneva. Tom Reynolds tried to make an appoint
ment with Ambassador Johnson before he left. Joe was willing
to go with Ma to Washington without an appointment. (This
was in the latter part of July. ) The two of them, with a woman
reporter from the Sun-Times named Miss Ruth Moore who
was to look after Ma on the trip, were waiting for the plane's

214

Hong Kong: Freedom

departure at Midway Airport when the reporter was paged to
take a phone call. The call from Tom Reynolds advised Miss
Moore that he (Reynolds) had arranged an appointment for
Joe and Ma with Ambassador Johnson for two days kter.
Everyone returned home and came back two days later for the
trip to Washington, financed by the Chicago Sun-Times. They
conferred with Ambassador Johnson; several of our Senators
and Representatives were with them. Mr. Johnson assured
Joe and Ma that he would not leave the meeting, and would
not take care of anything else, until the prisoner situation was
taken care of. He said he would place Fr. Rigney's name at the
top of the list ( he apparently did ) . Everybody returned home;
and during the trip, Miss Moore took good care of Ma.

"After the meetings at Geneva had been going on for about
a month, we were told that you were going to be released.
About a week later, you arrived in Hong Kong. I never saw
anybody so happy in my life as Joe Meegan."

Everywhere in Hong Kong I have received a warm and
hearty welcome from the British, American, and Chinese.

Bishop Bianchi and all the local clergy, brothers and sisters
welcomed me when they saw me.

Many Chinese refugees, former students of Fu Jen Univer
sity expressed their welcome, as did Europeans and Amer
icans I knew in Peking.

His Excellency, the Governor, Sir Alexander Grantham
honored me with a one-hour interview.

Recently I said a Sunday mass in a parish church. The pas
tor told the congregation who I was and that I had spent over
four years in prison in Peking.

It was a thrill and a consolation to say this parish mass and
offer benediction.

After services a Chinese lady asked me to say a mass for her
brother. As she spoke to me about him, her eyes became moist
then tears began to flow as the heart-stricken woman told me

215

Four fears in a Red Hell

her brother had been arrested some years ago by the Chinese
communists. Some time ago her brother wrote, begging the
family to send him Hong Kong money to the value of over
one thousand U. S. dollars, otherwise he would be killed.

In this way the Chinese communists squeeze money out of
people outside China.

This year he wrote and asked his family to write him, giving
full details of each member of their family, including a high
ranking officer in the Chinese National Army.

The sight of this suffering, weeping Chinese woman, who
had been blackmailed out of hard earned money and who was
now undergoing an attempted blackmail to force her into
spying for the communists, is a memory I shall forever remem
ber, typifying the suffering of the noble, sensitive, patient,
courageous, intelligent and industrious Chinese people and
the satanic wickedness of the communist government of the
misnamed "People's Republic" of China!

216

-

47

The Harvest

WHAT HAVE I profited from my four years and two months of
imprisonment?

Spiritually, educationally, I have made gains.

Physically, I have lost. This is the price for the gains.

Although throughout my imprisonment I was unable to
celebrate the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, to receive Our
Blessed Lord in Holy Communion, to visit Our Blessed Lord
in the Blessed Sacrament, to pray my Divine Office-all losses
of inestimable spiritual value-I did suffer with my Divine
Saviour. I also was granted a deeper insight into tie bitter
sufferings of Our Blessed Lord in His Holy Passion.

Moreover, I am more resolved to save my immortal soul
from the eternal Ts'ao Lan Tzu, the unending pains of hell.

Educationally, I profited much. I learned much.

I got a practical insight into applied Chinese communism.
Before my arrest, I knew much about communism, especially
of the Mao Tse-tung brand, but I learned much more in
prison.

I learned that Chinese communists are not to be trusted.
This holds for all of that brood of vipers from Mao Tse-tung
who betrayed China to the Kremlin; from the smooth, suave
Chou En-lai who has deceived and is still pulling the wool
over the eyes of many outstanding statesmen and politicians in
many parts of the world, on down to the kst received member
of the party who is every inch an unthinking puppet, dancing

217

Four Years in a Red Hell

to the liideous tune of his masters, who in turn are controlled
by the Kremlin.

I learned something about the nature of the cunning, brutal
tactics of world communism that threatens to destroy the age-
old and highly cherished liberties of a slumbering, self-satis
fied, over-confident free world.

More than ever, I love the Chinese people, the real people,
not the tiny, foreign controlled minority that has seized con
trol of China and tyrannizes, brutally tyrannizes the masses
of China.

Before my arrest, I felt hurt over the manner in which many
of the Fu Jen staff turned on me. During my imprisonment,
especially in the early stages, I was often offended over the
persecution dealt out to me by many cell-mates.

Now, however, I understand.

Now I realize better than before, what great pressure, in
human, diabolical, was brought to bear on these poor Chinese
who had their families and themselves to consider, who had
no powerful government to fight for them as I did.

I have a deeper understanding of chapters IX and XIII, of
the Apocalypse, as quoted by Hamish Fraser in his book,
"Fatal Star."

"I saw where a star had fallen from heaven to earth. This
star was entrusted with the key of that shaft which leads to
the abyss. So it opened the shaft which leads to the abyss, and
smoke rose from the shaft as smoke rising from the shaft dark
ened both the sun and the air. And out of the smoke a swarm
of locusts spread over the world, endowed with such power
for mischief as scorpions have on earth; they were not to in
jure the grass on the land, the green things that grew there, or
the trees; they were to attack men. . . . They had no power to
kill, only to inflict pain , . . such pain as a man feels when he
has been stung by a scorpion. (When those days coine, men
will be looking for the means of death, and there will be no

218

The Harvest

finding it; longing to die, and death will always give them the

slip)

"And out of the sea, in my vision, a beast came up to land.
To it the dragon gave the strength that was his, and great
dominion . . . and now the whole world went after the beast
in admiration, falling down and praising the dragon for giv
ing the beast all this dominion; praising the beast too. Who is
a match for the beast? They asked; who is fit to make war on
him? And he was given power of speech, to boast and to
blaspheme with, and freedom to work his will ... so he began
to utter blasphemy against God, blasphemy against His Name,
against His Dwelling-Place and all those who dwell in heaven.
He was allowed, too, to levy war on the saints, and to triumph
over them. The dominion given to him extended over all tribes
and peoples and languages and races; all the dwellers on earth
fell down in adoration of him, except those whose names the
lamb has written down in his book of life, the lamb slain in
sacrifice ever since the world was made. . . ?*

219

48-

Epilogue

I HAVE TRIED to tell my experiences of 50 months in the com
munist prisons of Ts'ao Lan Tzu Hutung ( which means the
Lane of the Misted Meadows) and Tzu Hsing Lu (which
means Reformation Street) of Peking, the capital of the "Chi
nese People's Republic/' a communist state.

Such is a very difficult task in memoirs of this size.

I have tried to be objective. I have recounted acts, of course,
false confessions for which I am ashamed although they were
made under duress and delusion. Moreover, I later corrected
them by denying them, under threat of execution.

In spite of tortures and cajolery, I did not make the con
fessions and stick to them, that the communists wanted.

For three years they tried to induce me to confess being an
agent of the U. S. government, and that the American Divine
Word Missionary organization was under the control of the
U, S. government. These appeared to me to be their main ob
jectives. But I remained firm, refusing to admit these out
rageous and ridiculous charges. As a consequence, I received
a long prison sentence.

Often I expected and was ready to be shot. On one occasion
I walked to what I thought was my execution grounds and I
did not waver. I was prepared to die.

Epilogue

On another occasion, I thought my cruel judge and his aides
would tear me to pieces, dismember me.

All these violent tortures only made me more stubborn. I
was prepared that night to die, to be literally torn to pieces.

Yet later, under an accumulation of prolonged, relatively
light tortures when my conscious mental faculties were seem
ingly functionless, I confessed falsely. But on coming to my
self again, I denied these false confessions.

Had I been shot or torn to pieces, I would iiave been re
membered as a martyr. But the cunning, diabolical, Chinese
communists do not want to make martyrs. They prefer to re
duce their victims to a sub-human, non-human, non-volitional
stage, so they easily confess, truthfully or falsely.

The compromised prisoners lead lives of disgrace re
proaching themselves and, if released, perhaps reproached
by others.

They are mentally, physically crippled.

The Chinese communists make disgraced mental cripples,
not martyrs.

After arriving in Hong Kong, I related some of my prison
sufferings to a Russian, who lived in Russia until 1923, when
he left. He had seen much of the cruelty of the Russian Bolshe-
viki communists. He said, "The Chinese communists employ
a subtilty in their tortures, unknown even to the Russian com
munists.

"The Russians lined up prisoners and shot them, sometimes
mowing down masses of them with machine guns, but the
Chinese communists do worse, they use subtile, refined, cun
ning tortures of which the Russians are ignorant and which
are worse than death."

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Four Years in a Red Hell

Although martyrdom has been denied me, I beg my readers
not to be ashamed of my witness for the Lord, but to enter
into the spirit of my sufferings for the gospel and to willingly
give witness yourselves,

In the words of Blessed Paul, I might say:

"I preach the gospel, and in its service I suffer hardship like
a criminal, yes, even imprisonment. . . . What persecutions I
underwent! And yet the Lord brought me through them all
safely." (2 Timothy 2:8-9, 3:11)

The Divine Word Mission
10 Tung Shan Terrace,
Stubbs Road,
Hong Kong

21 December, 1955
The Feast of the Holy
Apostle: Saint Thomas

110641